This may be a more important issue than the Presidency
Election holds key to court's direction
By Deb Price / The Detroit News
During his 1986 Senate confirmation hearings, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia scoffed at the idea of a “living Constitution,” echoing his earlier stingy assessment of what the sacred document offers Americans struggling to gain rights:
“To some degree, a constitutional guarantee is like a commercial loan; you can only get it if, at the time, you don’t really need it.”
Contrast this with the view of another Reagan appointee, Justice Anthony Kennedy. In the court’s ruling last year that gay Americans have constitutionally protected privacy rights, Kennedy declared that the lofty but vague language of the Constitution’s liberty clauses highlights their drafters’ humble wisdom:
“They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.”
The most lasting impact of the 2004 election may well be on the court’s vision. Will justices appointed by the next president read the Constitution like the tight-fisted Scalia or the open-hearted Kennedy?
