{"id":135,"date":"2005-11-06T19:19:51","date_gmt":"2005-11-06T23:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=135"},"modified":"2005-11-06T19:19:51","modified_gmt":"2005-11-06T23:19:51","slug":"begging-the-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=135","title":{"rendered":"Begging the amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two guys writing in the Sunday Outlook section of the Washington Post<\/a> write:<\/p>\n

>When conservatives say that we want “conservative” judges, or “strict constructionist” or “constitutionalist” judges, what we mean is pretty simple: *We want judges who won’t make stuff up.* We want judges who won’t view the Constitution as a mirror in which, at every turn, they see reflected their own opinions and policy preferences. We want judges who will play it straight, read the Constitutional or statutory text (our text, not foreign ones, which the court has relied on in cases like last session’s Roper v. Simmons , which held execution of juveniles to be unconstitutional), and apply it as fairly as they can to the individual case before them. [emphasis added].<\/p>\n

And we cannot help but wonder whether these two fellows have read the Constitution of the United States. Not be glib, but the Constitution\u2019s Ninth Amendment reads\u2013strictly quoted:<\/p>\n

>The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.<\/p>\n

Puzzling. The Constitution says unqualifiedly that the enumeration of specific rights doesn\u2019t mean that other unenumerated rights can be denied or disparaged. Now of course such rights are *not* enumerated in the Constitution\u2013but they are claimed to exist\u2013so one has to wonder how people have been able to say \u201cinventing new rights\u201d (as do the knuckleheads who wrote this piece) without shamelessly assuming the very thing they must demonstrate (that the rights in question are not rights retained). So the Constitution itself says that just because it isn\u2019t in there does not mean it\u2019s not a right. <\/p>\n

Strictly construed, in other words, the Constitution does not strictly construe itself. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two guys writing in the Sunday Outlook section of the Washington Post write: >When conservatives say that we want “conservative” judges, or “strict constructionist” or “constitutionalist” judges, what we mean is pretty simple: *We want judges who won’t make stuff up.* We want judges who won’t view the Constitution as a mirror in which, at … Continue reading Begging the amendment<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-begging-the-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}