Is Clarence Thomas Only Mostly Evil?
I think it's important that I start preparing my vast audience (Hi Mom!) for the eventual reality of all my posts being about the law. Not "about law" or "on legal matters," but "about the law." You know I'm going to be a doctor of jurisprudence when I get out, right?
Anyway, interesting column yesterday (see, now I'm calling it Saturday) from right-wing nutball commentator Charles Krauthammer. He really supports Clarence Thomas for Supreme Court Chief Justice on the basis of Thomas' focus on the founders' original intent. I think, still in the prenatal phase of my law career, that original intent is a bunch of hooey, but I do appreciate the distinction between judging based on the law and judging based on who you'd like to see win. Here's the important line:
Two years ago, Thomas (and Scalia and William Rehnquist) dissented from the court's decision to invalidate a Texas law that criminalized sodomy. Thomas explicitly wrote, "If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal it." However, since he is a judge and not a legislator, he could find no principled way to use a Constitution that is silent on this issue to strike down the law.
I'm not sure I agree with the ruling - I believe in the right to privacy, I'm not a right-wing wackjob yet - but I'll put it this way: it'd be nice if everyone could assume that judges never put their personal opinions into their professional opinions. Maybe then we wouldn't have John Cornyn attempting to justify the murder of judges when you don't support their decisions. What an SOB. Anyway, let's hope the courts move in that direction.
Comments
It's a turd!!!
Clarence Thomas in Hamdi vs Rumsfeld
Question left open:
If I wipe my ass on the bill of rights in order to demonstrate via circumspection that toilet paper is not a constitutional guarantee for a man about to take it up the ass from the Man and indefinitely and with no protections, rights, or remedies, what is in fact my first principle of jurisprudence?
Answer:
No one has a clue -- indeed, I shit on the whole bill of rights when I write a dissent like the one I wrote in Hamdi vs Rumsfeld. The best part...the turd will live on long after I'm gone for future turd lovers and those who keep trying to compare my turd fetish with jurisprudence and the work of my peers and predecessors.
Posted by: Christopher Knoepfle | October 7, 2005 9:15 AM