Obama Nominee Liu Believes Constitution Half Living, Half Breathing

[Confederate Kahanist]

http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/6058-obama-judge-believes-constitution-half-living-half-breathing



Many have described Obama’s 9th-Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu as “brilliant,” but he’s not smart enough to know that rules apply to him also.

Like so many people nowadays, Barack Obama’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee is a very confused man. He seems to believe that rules are made to be broken.

That is, at least by those with the clout to do the breaking.

Goodwin Liu, the University of California, Berkeley law professor nominated for the 9th Circuit, believes that judges have a right to impose their values on us from the bench — after, of course, running the Constitution through the spin cycle and divining from it a creative, unique meaning heretofore undiscerned by all the greatest legal minds in the annals of American jurisprudence.

Well, I guess that’s what earns Liu the “brilliant” tag.

Of course, the judge doesn’t actually say that he may impose his values. How he puts it is, relates Shannon Bream of FoxNews.com, “‘Applications of constitutional text and principles must be open to adaptation and change . . . as the conditions and norms of our society become ever more distant from those of the Founding generation.’”

Man, I’m impressed. As Archie Bunker might say (from the episode in which he had hired an erudite lawyer), “Don’t he talk good, Edith?”

The line Bream quoted came from a book Liu co-authored titled, “Keeping Faith with the Constitution.” Keeping faith with the Constitution? Why do I get flashbacks to 1984’s Ministry of Truth and Ministry of Peace, whose business was, respectively, lies and war? 

Just as Liu tries to read “nuance” into the Constitution, however, he has defenders who try to read nuance into him. For example, Doug Kendall, president of the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center (a.k.a. the Ministry of the Constitution), rejects the idea that Liu is extreme, saying, “If you look at Liu's scholarship, he rejects both the conservative idea that judges should strictly construe the Constitution and the liberal idea that the Constitution is a living, breathing document.”

Now, I’m not sure what lies in-between. Does Liu have a god complex and believe the Constitution is only living when he raises it from the dead? By the way, I hear that Mr. Kendall moonlights working for Planned Parenthood and is nonpareil at assuaging the fears of the teen girls he counsels.

He tells them not to worry, they’re only half pregnant.

A clue as to Liu’s competence is found in the praise heaped upon him. Boosters talk about his “brilliance,” how he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his high grades at Stanford University and Yale Law School. But while that’s certainly doubleplusgood, it’s much like talking up a pilot but ignoring the most important factor: Can he fly? The only relevant qualification here is whether Liu understands the Constitution and is willing to abide by it.

Yet, many have been so inured to the “living document” spin that they believe it’s legitimate legal theory. So let’s discuss the matter.

A recent study showed that many Americans consider our founding documents “obsolete.” But they might reconsider that opinion if they better understood the nature of a constitution. A constitution is basically a “contract” people have with one another. Now, contracts serve the following purpose: They state what the rights and responsibilities of all those party to the contract are and prevent the stronger from trampling upon the rights of the weaker. Our Constitution, for instance, protects the rights to freedom of speech and religion, the right to peaceably assemble and the right to privacy, among many others. But it has one great flaw, in that the Constitution is like sun-block: It only works when it’s applied.

That is to say, would you like your rights respected? If so, you must protect the sanctity of our national contract. As soon as it is rendered impotent, as soon as a climate in which it can be violated with impunity is created, then all your rights are in jeopardy — including those you hold most dear.

Here’s how this works in practice: Mr. Peehs applauds the separation-of-church-and-state ruling, even though it’s not in the Constitution. After all, he doesn’t want to hear the word “God” in school. But then, owing to the Kelo decision, his property is taken away so Donald Trump can build a casino. He protests, saying that the founders never intended for eminent domain to be used to seize one citizen’s property so that another, far richer citizen could make money off it. “But, hey,” say the judges, “times are a-changin’, and the Constitution has to change with them.”

Now, what really happened is this: Absent constitutional constraints, might made right. A precedent was set stating that the Constitution was “living” and that judges could determine how it should live. Thus, secularists could now ignore it and enforce their biases on religious people because they had more power. Next, tax-hungry local politicians and developers were able to ignore it and seize Mr. Peehs’ land because they had more power. Now a “human relations task force” in California wants two public officials punished by the U.S. Justice Dept. and local DA offices — entities that have more power — for expressing their beliefs. See where this is heading? Most people have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes.

But this is what happens when we entertain Professor Liu’s notion that the Constitution may be interpreted to suit the times. And it is wrong for so many reasons. First, judges are not conforming their rulings to the times — unless they mean The New York Times.

Case in point: Many state courts have divined a right to faux marriage in their state constitutions. Yet polls and referenda consistently show that the majority opposes government sanction of such unions. Now, if the people don’t determine the “times,” who does? A few black-robed oligarchs? Clearly, these judges aren’t interpreting what the times are but what they think the times should be. They’re not judging the times — we’re getting judges’ tastes.

The “times” nonsense also ignores the very purpose of a constitution. The times are a reflection of the majority will at a point in time, and this is precisely what a constitution is meant to temper. The times always seem right to those caught up in them, but they’re sometimes wrong. So an ideal constitution constrains the times with some rules that are timeless.

And what if the Constitution really is lacking in some way? Well, that’s what the Amendment process is for. The legal way to alter the Constitution, it ensures that those who actually determine the times — the people — get to determine how the document will reflect the times. So it is we, the people, who are to say when the Constitution will be “brought to life.”

And this is, in fact, what bothers the Professor Lius of the world. They’re not satisfied to be guardians of the Constitution; they want to be social engineers. They’ve established themselves as the Ministry of the Times. What they really are, though, is the Ministry of Life for our republic — Newspeakingly speaking, of course. 

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.