Powerline brings to our attention some goings-on at Yale Law School. There was a conference yesterday (and they report on it at length) led by Bruce Ackerman (Yale Law) and Cass Sunstein (Chicago Law). The project, according to its organizers, is nothing less than a re-write of the Constitution. What should the Constitution look like like in 2020? Follow the links provided by Powerline, including the one to the progressives’ site, The Constitution in 2020. First line on their web site: "It is time for progressives to set a constitutional agenda for the 21st Century." Great stuff, let’s keep on eye on it; certainly Powerline will.
There are few things more frightening to me than the prospect of Bruce Ackerman and like-minded professors tampering with the Constitution.
Our procedures for amending the Constitution (or rewriting it!) pretty much preclude the kind of exercise these blue-staters are advocating. I’m not really worried about this...I’m much more worried about the nickel-and-dime changes wrought by jurisprudence. Those fly under the radar and influence our lives just as profoundly as a constitutional rewrite.
Dain
You’re post reminded me of this quote:
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
I issued a challenge on my weblog, Old Patriot’s Pen, for people to consider how they would rewrite the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. So far, no one’s written a comment to my article, "Time to Reaffirm American Values". Yet the courts have already "rewritten" the Constitution on several occasions - Roe vs Wade, the teen death penalty, and several other controvercial decisions.
There’s an old saying, that unless you stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. The same thing can be said of a Constitution - if it means whatever a judge thinks it means, it means nothing.
I think we can all say with confidence that these guys will never be able to amend the Constitution for any purpose. And thus spoketh Harry Reid, "they are out of the mainstream."
Why do tired, discarded ideas like the socialism advocated by Ackerman always get labeled "progressive"? Isn’t it precisely the opposite?
Well, not surprisingly, you guys are once again merely the more articulate version of Rush Limbaugh. He was also upset about this conference. Yale’s chapter of the American Constitution Society responded by inviting Limbaugh to speak, and kindly reminded him that "the Reagan Justice Department got together in the mid-1980s to produce a conservative vision of ’The Constitution in the year 2000.’"
The full letter from the Yale group to Limbaugh can be found here.
This is the link:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/limbaugh.letter.pdf
I suppose it’s ok when conservatives are doing the tampering, right?