Of all the editorial writers I read regularly, Professor Thomas Sowell is by far my favorite writer and commentator on the day’s events. Mr. Sowell has a PHD in economics and has written the most clear explanation of economic theory for the lay person I have ever read and studied. Learn more about Thomas Sowell. No matter how busy I am, I never want to miss his editorial commentary of the day. Please take a few moments to visit his site and learn why I think Sowell is one true voice of one crying in the wilderness of America today. Writing for both the Hoover Institute and Stanford University, Professor Sowell wrote this think piece: Judicial Activism Revisited.
Obama will soon be nominating a prospective jurist for the Supreme Court. Sowell writes, “What is at stake in Supreme Court nominations is the power of the federal government. “Empathy” is just camouflage, a soothing word for those who do not look beyond nice-sounding rhetoric.”
How We’re Killing Our ‘Living Constitution’
By THOMAS SOWELL | Posted Friday, May 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT
While President Barack Obama has, in one sense, tipped his hand by saying he wants judges with “empathy” for certain groups, he has in a more fundamental sense concealed the real goal:
Getting judges who will ratify an expanding scope of the power of the federal government and a declining restraint by the U.S. Constitution.
This is consistent with everything else Obama has done in office and is consistent with his decades-long record of alliances with people who reject American society’s fundamentals.
Judicial expansion of federal power is not really new, even if the audacity with which that goal is being pursued may be unique. For more than a century, believers in bigger government have also been believers in having judges interpret the restraints of the Constitution out of existence.
They called this “a living Constitution.” It has in fact been a dying Constitution, as its restraining provisions have been “interpreted” to mean less and less so that the federal government can do more and more.
For example, the Constitution lets private property be taken for “public use” — perhaps building a reservoir or a highway — if “just compensation” is paid. That power was expanded by the Supreme Court in 2005 when it “interpreted” this to mean that private property could be taken for a “public purpose,” which could include almost anything for which politicians could come up with the right rhetoric.
