USA Today--Will Roberts Leave You Alone? (HOLY MOLY!)

[Gloria]

Was this posted already?? In the News section......

08/15/2005 - Updated 08:31 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050816/edit16.art.htm

Page 12A
Will Roberts leave you alone?
His legal record raises questions on whether he accepts right to privacy.

Ask people about personal privacy, and most will see it as a top priority and a fundamental right. The last time a question of that sort was asked in a poll by Opinion Research for USA Weekend, an overwhelming 88% said they are concerned about their privacy and consider protecting it important.

But President Bush's nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court may soon call into question whether privacy rights exist.

For some time now, conservatives who favor a “strict constructionist” view of the Constitution have been arguing that they do not. The Constitution doesn't mention privacy rights, they say. Rather, they were invented by the Supreme Court in the 1960s and '70s.

The conservatives' primary grievance is with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that women, not the state, get to decide whether to end their pregnancies by abortion. But by questioning the unpinning of Roe, they call into doubt many earlier rulings that keep the government from meddling in people's lives.

Three current justices — William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — have questioned whether a right to privacy exists. The court doesn't need a fourth, not least because the anti-privacy argument is a denial of history and basic American values.

In fact, the right to privacy is older than the republic, protected in the Constitution and affirmed repeatedly in a century of court rulings before the abortion controversy. Though the word privacy isn't in the Constitution, the “right to be let alone,” as Justice Louis Brandeis put it, permeates the document.

MORE!

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. I always chuckle when I read about Scalia's dicta.

He's the epitome of the strict constructionist and his legal opinions have steadily given cops an incredible berth to search a vehicle. I think now they can search your car with just a traffic stop, where before you needed probably cause.

...you gotta wonder if these right-wing voters really know about the devil they think they know.

[matt819]

2. He's not conservative - he's a rightwing radical

This is the take home message. He's an activist right wing judge who will seek to overturn and undue laws that his political and religious ideology demands that he overturn. He's the sort of radical jurist that this nation does not need.