Reply To: Political Statements
I don’t know what others would label a constitutional scholar, but I consider both men in that group because each has taught con law in an accredited law school. There are probably a lot of gradations in rank among those who teach the subject, those who publish books on the subject, those who work on appellate level briefs on the subject, and so on, but to me, these two know a lot more about the subject than the average member of congress.
Each of them has focused on the issues related to defining and interpreting the constitution’s gray areas, which are the ones that affect new legislation most strongly, since they tend to be under dispute.
In the US, the “activist judge” notion, as far as I can tell, represents at its heart the conflict between Federal government supremacy and States’ Rights. Most of the cases where a court’s decision has been criticized as an attempt to “legislate from the bench” have been ones where a court with broader authority has negated the power of a lower court. The United States’ most divisive legal issue is abortion, and the famous Supreme court case Roe v. Wade, which overturned the right of states to pass laws restricting a woman’s right to have an abortion, is the centerpiece of this area of disagreement.
My personal view is that basically any conflict that pit states against the Federal government, or traditional values against modern values, or religious consensus against pluralistic compromise, or Taliban against Crusader infidels, is in many ways the same as the ancient conflict between urban and rural viewpoints. It’s rules & restrictions & novelty & expertise & specialization as the norm, or it’s tradition & Nature & status quo power & We’ve Always Done Things This Way as the norm, and neither side tends to get the framework of the other side. But for people on each side, the other side tends to resemble their psychological shadow stuff, which makes for some intense conflict.