"It's a poverty to decide that child must die so that you may live as you wish." - Mother Teresa
More Pro-Life action cards .. ..
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.John Donne
"Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny,
To wherever your decrees have assigned me.
I follow readily, but if I choose not,
Wretched though I am, I must follow still.
Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling." - Cleanthes
"The willing, Destiny guides them; the unwilling, Destiny drags them." - Seneca the Younger (translating Cleanthes)
Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
[Ours] is a unique scheme of government even as compared to concentrated in England and in France and in Belgium, in Scotland. There is an extra aspect to our scheme of things, which makes this Court exercise responsibility not exercised by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Supreme Court of India, or the High Court of Australia. It is this. The Constitution of the United States is the oldest – to some people that’s a fault – in the Western world. The men who framed it were, to an extraordinary degree, a constellation of very able men. But they were not godlike, they were limited by human vision, limited by their own imagination, and by their own experience. But they were very wise men so they did not try to formulate a Constitution designed for the undefined and illimitable future, as they conceived the destiny of this country to be, with particularity. They wrote in broad outlines so that the future would not be foreclosed, so that the past would not too much govern the future. And this it is, and I think largely for that reason, that so far as the structure of our government is concerned, as formulated by fifty-odd men in Philadelphia in 1787, the structure has remained unchanged. There have been amendments to the constitution, but no structural amendments. In amendments relating to the right of women to vote, election of Senators by the people directly and not by the subordinate legislature of the states, and a few other amendments, no drastic changes in the distribution of political power within our federalism were made.
Not until after and as the result of the Civil Was there a change in the distribution of governmental power, the change that was then was made by the amendments, the so-called War Amendments. And those amendments are the source of the greatest difficulties and the most challenging problems to come before this Court. The amendments were framed in inevitably vague terms, considering the purposes they had in mind. They put limitations upon state powers which theretofore had not existed. Those are the famous clauses of which you must have read at least scraps in the newspapers, those are the amendments which prohibit any state from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. And therefore, every enactment of every state, every action by the government of a state any governmental act of any of the forty-eight, soon to be forty-nine, states, may be challenged at the bar of this Court on the ground that such action, such legislation, is a deprivation of liberty without due process of law or denies the equal protection of the laws.
Now those phrases, those crucial phrases “due process of law” and “equal protection of laws” – what is “due,” what is “equal,” in a world in which there cannot always be uniformities – those are the phrases of the Constitution, saying no more than I have quoted, that beget the difficulties that come to the bar of this Court and that very anxiously challenge the thoughts not only of the judges but of the people of this country.
Let me illustrate very concretely the difference in having such a restriction upon the action of state governments in our Constitution as against the absence of such a provision in the federal constitutions of Canada, Australia, and India. There is no such provision in the Indian Constitution, which was the product of careful study by that very distinguished jurist of India, Sir Benegal Rau, who spent several years here studying how our scheme of things works, and then recommended against inclusion of such a restriction upon the states of India. My mind recalls, as I speak, that preceding the First World War, a Liberal Government under Asquith, in proposing the Home Rule Bill designed for Ireland which would have put into that measure a due-process like ours. And that debate is well worth reading by any student of the subject because many of the leading lawyers in England, then in Parliament, took part in the debate. Some of the best of them studied our experience and said those are too indefinite instruments of language with which to entrust courts for judicial judgment.
By great good fortune I am able to illustrate the point even more vividly by an item in this morning’s paper. Prime Minister Diefenbaker of Canada introduced a measure in Ottawa yesterday, a measure that would put into law, equal protection, and all the rest of it – with two vital differences. In the first place, Prime Minister Diefenbaker said, “I am introducing this as a statute, not as an amendment to our Constitution” – a statute capable of change by Parliament the next day, if it so chooses. And secondly, his bill would impose such a “bill of rights” not as a restriction upon provincial powers, but merely restriction upon dominion powers. Bur our Constitution enables this Court to strike down acts of Congress and acts of every one of the forty-eight States and action by President of the United States, the justification for such decisions being nothing else that the phrase “due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws.” Of course, the Court isn’t a class in English composition and the Constitution isn’t merely a literary document. It is a scheme of government with a great deal of history behind it, with antecedents of thought, of purpose, and so forth. Nevertheless, the ultimate justification for nullifying or saying that what Congress did, what President did, what the legislature of Massachusetts or New York or any other state did was a beyond its power, is that provision of the Constitution which protects liberty against infringement without due process of law. There are times, I can assure you – more time that once or twice – when I sit in this chair and wonder whether that isn’t too great a power to give to any nine men, no matter how wise, how well disciplined, how disinterested. It covers the whole gamut of political, social, and economic activities.
Source:
Frankfurter, F. (1965). Of Law and Life & Other Things That Matter. (P. B. Kurland, Ed.) Harvard University Press.
My pointing out that the American people may be satisfied with a reduction of their liberties should not be taken as a suggestion that the proponents of The Living Constitution follow the desires of the American people in determining how the Constitution should evolve. They follow nothing so precise; indeed, as a group they follow nothing at all. Perhaps the most glaring defect of Living Constitutionalism, next to its incompatibility with the whole anti-evolutionary purpose of a constitution, is that there is no agreement, an no chance of agreement, upon what is to be the guiding principle of the evolution. Panta rei is not a sufficiently informative principle of constitutional interpretation. What is it that judge must consult to determine when, and in what direction, evolution has occurred? Is it the will of the majority, discerned from newspapers, radio talk shows, public opinion polls, and chats at the country club? Is it the philosophy of Hume, or of John Rawls, or of John Stuart Mill, or of Aristotle? As soon as the discussion goes beyond the issue of whether the Constitution is static, the evolutionists divide into as many camps as there are individual views of the good, the true, and the beautiful. I think that is inevitably so, which means that evolutionism is simply not a practicable constitutional philosophy.
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[T]he difficulties and uncertainties of determining original meaning and applying it to modern circumstances are negligible compared with the difficulties and uncertainties of the philosophy which says that the Constitution changes; that the very act which it once prohibited it now permits, and which it once permitted it now forbids; and that the key to that change is unknown and unknowable.
Source:
Scalia, A. (1998). A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. (A. Gutmann, Ed.) Princeton University Press.
In the past few decades, however, we have developed a legal culture in which lawyers routinely – and I do mean routinely – make no distinction between words in the text of a statute and words in its legislative history. My court is frequently told, in briefs and in oral argument, that "Congress said thus-and-so" – when in fact what is being quoted is not the law promulgated by Congress, nor even any text endorsed by a single house of Congress, but rather the statement of a single committee of a single house, set forth in committee report. Resort to legislative history has become so common that lawyerly wags have popularized a humorous quip inverting the oft-recited (and oft-ignored) rule as to when its use it appropriate: "One should consult the text of the statute," the joke goes, "only when the legislative history is ambiguous." Alas, that is no longer funny. Reality has overtaken parody. A few terms ago, I read a brief that began the legal argument with a discussion of legislative history and then continued (I am quoting it verbatim): "Unfortunately, the legislative debates are not helpful. Thus, we turn to the other guidepost in this difficult area, statutory language." - (Scalia, 1998)
Source:
Scalia, A. (1998). A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. (A. Gutmann, Ed.) Princeton University Press.
Tis the Star Spangled Banner, oh, long may it wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
"[T]his flag, which we honor and under which we serve, is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. Though silent, it speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us, and of the records they wrote upon it." - President Woodrow Wilson
Of all the criticism leveled against textualism, the most mindless is that it is “formalistic.” The answer to that is, of course it’s formalistic! The rule of law is about form. If, for example, a citizen performs an act—let us say the sale of certain technology to a foreign country—which is prohibited by a widely publicized bill proposed by the administration and passed by both houses of Congress, but not yet signed by the President, that sale is lawful. It is of no consequence that everyone knows both houses of Congress and the President wish to prevent that sale. Before the wish becomes a binding law, it must be embodied in a bill that passes both houses and is signed by the President. Is that not formalism? A murderer has been caught with blood on his hands, bending over the body of his victim; a neighbor with a video camera has filmed the crime; and the murderer has confessed in writing and on videotape. We nonetheless insist that before the state can punish this miscreant, it must conduct a full-dress criminal trial that results in a verdict of guilty. Is that not formalism? Long live formalism. It is what makes a government a government of laws and not of men. (Scalia, 1998)
Source:
Scalia, A. (1998). A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. (A. Gutmann, Ed.) Princeton University Press.
It has been 149 days of No Television for me i.e. I haven’t watched television for 4 months, 29 days. My new year resolution was to stop watching TV. So far so good. I plan on keeping my resolution. I no longer have the urge to watch TV.
So what do I with all the free time? Well now I have more time for riding my bike and working out at the gym. Which I do regularly.
Also, since the beginning of this year I have read 17 books. That is almost 1 book per week. I think I have read every book and essay by Justice Scalia. I have also read all the books by Justice Frankfurter that are available at Santa Clara Library and the Martin Luther King Library in San Jose, CA.
Right now, I am reading the biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes by White. An excellent book.
I plan to finish at least 50 books by year end. Wish me luck! :)
In reality, however, if one accepts the principle that the objective of judicial interpretation is to determine the intent of the legislature, being bound by genuine but unexpressed legislative intent rather than the law is only the theoretical threat. The practical threat is that, under the guise or even the self-delusion of pursuing unexpressed legislative intents, common-law judges will in fact pursue their own objectives and desires, extending their lawmaking proclivities from the common law to the statutory field. When you are told to decide, not on the basis of what the legislature said, but on the basis of what it meant, and are assured that there is no necessary connection between the two, your best shot at figuring out what the legislature meant is to ask yourself what a wise and intelligent person should have meant; and that will surely bring you to the conclusion that the law means what you think it ought to mean. (Scalia, 1998)
Source:
Scalia, A. (1998). A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. (A. Gutmann, Ed.) Princeton University Press.
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