9 Reasons Constitutional Originalism Is Bullsh*t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

This week, Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court seat vacated by the late Antonin Scalia, Neil Gorsuch, started his Senate confirmation hearings. That Gorsuch is even being considered angers many Democrats, given that Republicans didn't extend the same courtesy to Merrick Garland, the moderate appeals court judge President Barack Obama nominated for the Supreme Court after Scalia's death, and whose nomination was summarily blocked by an obstinate GOP. In any event, Democrats now have to decide whether they block this nominee or hold their fire for the next, and presumably more radical, judge to come up for confirmation.


Part of the case for Gorsuch (or the case against him, depending on your view) is that he says he's a constitutional originalist, a legal ideology most closely identified with Scalia, the judge whose seat he may fill. Constitutional originalism is the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution as its authors meant it when they wrote it — that the Constitution is not a living, breathing document as more progressive legal scholars claim, but a black-and-white document to be read according to the literal text and what the writers meant when they penned it. It's a compelling vision, one that positions judges not as moral agents but simply neutral translators of the written word, seeking solely to carry out the law and not create it.

But it's also a false one — a role that is both impossible and undercut by its own conceit, given that the writers of the Constitution arguably intended for it to be a living document. And yet Gorsuch remains a proponent. Here's why his originalist theory is bullshit.

...

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a9162680/neil-gorsuch-constitutional-originalism-supreme-court/

[shraby]

1. He lies, Alito and Roberts claimed the same thing and we got Citizens United plus other

abominations from them.

[BeeBee]

2. The 9th Amendment:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In other words, just because a right is not spelled out explicitly in the constitution doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[underpants]

3. Marking for later read

[Thomas Hurt]

4. Judges of Scalia's and Gorsuch's stature

are not stupid people.

yet they believe in a theory that judges should interpret the Constitution as its authors meant it when they wrote it.

This is ludicrous on the face of it. He is saying we should apply what the founding authors of a society in late 1780's would have in context of our modern society.

One, you are incredibly arrogant to think you know what our founder's thought then much less how they would apply the constitution today. The founder's could not have foreseen our modern world.

Gorsuch knows this. His theory is just a excuse for being an ideologue. He is another christofascist theocrat.