Wednesday, October 25, 2000

Your paper is certainly a bastion of right-wing claptrap, and I thought Amy Riley's article, "Uphold Constitution best: Bush or Gore?" well representative. Particularly ironic was her description of Al Gore's future Supreme Court choices (were he elected) as clear examples of "situational ethics" and "the hallmark of the post '60s and '70s era 'me generation.'" She should pick up a history book now and then and perhaps fax its contents to Mr. Bush.

Self-described "conservatives" have chanted the mantra "strict constructionist" since Brown vs. Board of Education outlawed separate but equal schools and ordered integration. Historically the Court has never been "strict constructionist" if the phrase means following the letter of the Constitution. The framers wouldn't have needed a final arbiter of disputes if they wanted to blindly follow a social compact.

Read "Marbury v Madison," the first case where the Court asserted its power to interpret the Constitution. In this case one of the primary framers of the Constitution, acting on behalf of the executive branch, lost the case to the arbitrating power he helped create.

The "Louisiana Purchase" under Jefferson definitely seemed extra-constitutional at the time, framed as it was as a treaty but spending taxpayer money without the assent of Congress. Should we give it back to France?

There is no provision in the Constitution for a Federal Bank, nor for all those canals built in the 1800s, nor for those highways built under Eisenhower, nor for airports and trains and lots of other engineering and social innovations since 1787.

And what of "Brown v. BE?" Does Ms. Riley wish to return to "separate but equal" if a state legislature decides that's okay? How can Mr. Bush's stand that abortion in cases of rape and incest is a protected right be any more correct constitutionally than any other stand? The Constitution doesn't mention rape or incest.

Article III section 1 states: "The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court..."

Article III section 2 states: "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States,..."

The court has always interpreted these sections, and the other two branches have always acquiesced (except during the Civil War), as giving the Supreme Court final judicial authority over all constitutional disputes. The so-called legislating from the bench has come in the form of redress of some of those disputes.

Ms. Riley's suggestion that we amend the Constitution for every major constitutional dispute is quite beyond the pale. Even Antonin Scalia, the greatest intellect and smallest mind on the Supreme Court, would recoil from such an impracticality. Of the 26 amendments in 213 years, one just repealed another (21 repealed 18) and the first 10 were the Bill of Rights passed in 1791. That leaves 14 amendments in 209 years; hardly "numerous" as Ms. Riley would have us believe.

If she can't pain herself to read the Constitution, nor any of the history behind its passage and evolution, I would point Ms. Riley to the Preamble. The Founders thought it important enough to explain just what they were about in the midst of very turbulent social and economic times: ..."form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty." They had no intention of binding us to a Napoleonic Code that covers everything from waste disposal to spitting on the sidewalk.

As far as I could tell, the only fact in Ms. Riley's article was Al Gore's quote about the Constitution as a living, breathing document, which it is. George Bush may in fact hold it as a sacred document, which it also is, but in his case it's more like the proverbial pig looking at a watch.

Timothy Parker

Peachtree City

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