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Is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson an originalist? Of course not. In no possible universe will we get a Justice Jackson who turns out to be a closet moderate or even conservative. The last Democratic Supreme Court pick who moved to the right was Byron White, appointed by President Kennedy. But for some reason she felt compelled to say this in her confirmation hearing:
“I believe that the Constitution is fixed in its meaning. . . I believe that it’s appropriate to look at the original intent, original public meaning, of the words when one is trying to assess because, again, that’s a limitation on my authority to import my own policy.”
When Robert Bork talked this way in 1987, the media and the liberal establishment (but we repeat ourselves) rushed to declare that this “exotic” and “out of the mainstream” view disqualified him for the Supreme Court. Now originalism is the mainstream, such that progressive jurists must lie about it.
There are many difficulties with originalism, or the different versions of it, which Lucretia and Steve have discussed at length in the past, but in this episode we simply marvel at the spectacle of Judge Jackson’s tergiversations from the old party line.
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That was excellent.
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I wish I’d had time to liveblog this podcast. It was good.
First, too often people equate Sam’s Club with Costco. Granted, they both hawk their wares by offering samples, but at Sam’s Club it’s easy to find junk, whereas it’s difficult (but not impossible) to find junk at Costco. Thomas Sowell explained in his Basic Economics that Costco locates its warehouses in neighborhoods two standard deviations higher in median income than WalMart locations.
Second, on the question of a criminal defense attorney who knows his client is guilty, that attorney is still required to defend his client zealously and require that the state prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. The moral/philosophical dilemma escalates with the severity of the criminal offense of course, but the duty remains.
Third and more globally, we live in a lawless society. Judge KetANNji will be confirmed, despite claiming not to know what a woman is. This dovetails with my overarching dismay: where are the Dads of the high school girls where boys are permitted to use the girls’ locker room? That Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent knowingly, blatantly lied at a Board of Ed meeting when he said he knew of no sexual assaults in any of the Loudoun County Public high schools. He had personally signed the order transferring the 17 year old rapist to a second Loudoun County Public high school, where that rapist committed yet more sexual assaults – and the public attending that meeting knew all thos facts. How on earth is there not a crowd at the Superintendent’s office every day with torches and pitchforks, tarring and feathering the liar?
We live in a lawless society. January 6 protesters languish in political prison, while BLM arsonists and killers skate. The laws of biology are ignored, even Newton’s laws of motion are at risk.