Supporters of the President and Harriett Miers have now taken to the insulting tactic of defending Harriett Miers because she’ll “vote right.” That is, the outcomes of her decisions will align with conservative policy goals. No only is this not enough, but it will destroy the moral authority of conservatism.
Before saying anything else, it’s hard to beleve that someone who is instinctually compromise-oriented will be willing to endure the insults and ignominy of an originalist jurisprudence. Such an approach would require reversing a great many leftist victories that have sprung from the courts, ranging from Lawrence and Carolene Products to Miranda and Roe. Miers has shown no recognition of the central problem of activism in the court decisions of the last 60 years. Her lack of philosophical grounding provides little hope that she’ll avoid the blandishments, cajoling, and intellectual force of leftist defenders of the status quo.
Second, even if I’m wrong, it would accerate the demise of our constitutional order for conservatives effectively to abandon the rule of law to pursue conservative policies. It would make us the mirror image of the Warren Court, results-oriented and incoherent, but this time for right-wing goals. Conservatives and originalists do not believe that one or another policy goal, even the abolition of abortion, warrants a retreat from the treatment of law as a coherent system expressing the will of the people in codified laws that should be interpreted according to results-neutral rules. Pace the legal realists, we believe there are correct answers to legal questions, or at the very least a range of correct answers. The chains on judges must be self-imposed. Their residucal respect in a democratic society can be quickly exhausted if they step beyond the technical application of law and substitute their own will. In other words, a conservative justice must rule against his own desires with great frequency, leaving decisions to the political branches and the logical impact of their expression in codified statutes. The long run result of any other approach is nothing short of despotism.
As interpreted by the great patron saint of lawyers, St. Thomas More:
Wife: Arrest him!
More: For what?
Wife: He’s dangerous!
Roper: For all we know he’s a spy!
Daughter: Father, that man’s bad!
More: There’s no law against that!
Roper: There is, God’s law!
More: Then let God arrest him!
Wife: While you talk he’s gone!
More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would
you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if
you cut them down (and you’re just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand
upright in the winds that would blow then?Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
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Look, if it were as clear cut as “she’ll vote right”, then we could nominate a computer to sit in the chair and just bark out what is “right-ist”. But for the most part, no case is ever that easy.
This has “disaster” written all over it.
It might be impolitic to point out that in his days of power, St Thomas More was prepared to cut down every Protestant in England to get after the Devil’s heresy.
Hardly. Nice try though. Not every Catholic favored such methods, and I can’t think of any source that says More did. But while we’ve all been handed down the mythology of the Inquisition, we forget the violence of the Vendee, the suppression of Catholics under Cromwell and William of Orange, the travails of the Jacobites and Mary Queen of Scotts, as well as later assaults such as Bismark’s Kulturkampf and that of the Republicans in Spain.
Yes, but nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.
Sure they did. The Spanish and other Church-led Inquisition were inaugerated in response to the politicized inquisitions of various European politican leaders which themselves were responses to the earlier Medieval inquisitions set in motion by Pope Gregory. The hope of the Church was to take it out of the hands of political abusers. In the whole history of the inquisition something like 5,000 people were put to death over a several hundred year span. This is all documented in the Netanyahu history.
This amount of carnage pales in comparison to that of the Religious Wars of the 17th Century and the anti-Christian Genocides of the French Revolution and Soviet Regimes. Since an exaggerrated acount of Catholic Crimes figures so prominently in those that would instead create absolutely powerful political authorities without counterbalancing local and ecclesiastical authorities, I feel obliged to say something in defense of the moderate reality of Catholic practied. I’m glad the Church today has made its peace with the liberal regime, but don’t forget the bloody wars of religion around the corner it aimed to prevent by preserving the unity of Christendom. Also don’t forget that the inquisition was aimed first and foremost at turning people away from heresies and heretical teachings, the consequences of which exceed any temporal goal.
I was riffing off of Monty Python, not making an actual point.
Unsure of total accuracy but if so, he had to tear down some trees to make the placard and the stakes:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUDmoreT.htm
“As a writer, More was aware of the power of books to change people’s opinions. He therefore drew up a list of Protestant books that were to be banned. This included the English translation of the Bible by William Tyndale. People caught owning Protestant books were sat facing back-to-front on a horse. Wearing placards explaining their crimes, these people were walked through the streets of London. More also organized public burnings of Protestant books.
“People found guilty of writing and selling Protestant books were treated more harshly. Like those caught making Protestant sermons, they were sometimes burnt at the stake.”