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WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU HOLD A CONVENTION OF LIBERAL LAWYERS?:A: Dancing? It's Good for the Constitution (Washington Post, 8/4/2003) (via Southern Appeal)

At a panel earlier in the day, law students' mouths were literally agape with glee and surprise. Could this really be happening in front of their unworthy eyes, a panel of esteemed federal appellate judges talking like human beings, leaping out of the dense legalese of court opinions and, yes, publicly dissing the conservatives for views they call abominable and legally indefensible?...

Judge Robert Bork, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Antonin Scalia? All hypocrites about their legal philosophy of wanting to interpret rather than make law, according to the panel.

President Bush? A teller of half-truths.

They're liberals, why should they honor traditions of judicial decorum?

"We shouldn't sit back quietly . . . while they try to undo the laws of the last 50 years, the laws respecting human dignity and individual rights," Calabresi says. "Even Judge Bork, before he went completely off the deep end, said you cannot undo the New Deal." The judge lets out a heavy sigh. "I think part of their agenda is to create a constitutional right to discriminate. Think about that. A right to discriminate."

I think he's talking about 'freedom of association.' Who could be so extreme as to support freedom of association?

U.S. District Judge Louis Oberdorfer drove the point home.... "If you do it right, you people here will become law clerks and the law clerks will become judges and the assistant secretaries and you'll run the world." (Tip to RickV.)

The ability to "run the world" may not have been won by this generation of judges, but who's to say the next generation won't succeed? And surely our elder generation should egg them on to try, for what damage could the desire of judges "to run the world" possibly do to our social order?

Meanwhile:
Liberal legal elite plans comeback (MSNBC, 8/4/2003) (via PowerLine)

[Stephen] Reinhardt, who was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Carter in 1980, added, "Let’s be clear about another thing: 'moderate' and 'liberal' are not the same. ... We ought to restore a liberal, progressive philosophy this nation needs and our Constitution demands."

Hmmm, can't seem to recall the section of the Constitution that demands a liberal, progressive philosophy. Could it be the Soviet constitution he's talking about? That would explain the Pledge of Allegiance ruling.

Endorsing same-sex marriage, U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts said traditional heterosexual marriage was a "convenient mechanism to enforce conformity ... which is where I think the religious Right would like to keep it."

Citing the 50 percent divorce rate, Batts said, "We (gays and lesbians) could show heterosexuals who marry a whole lot if we were able to take on the institution of marriage and turn it into what we know it could be.... We can show them what marriage is really worth and what it means."

Learn something new every day: I had never suspected that the purpose of heterosexual marriage was "to enforce conformity." Sure, there will be those who think it's a trifle hubristic -- partaking of F.A. Hayek's Fatal Conceit -- "to take on the institution of marriage and turn it into" something new. Those stuffy conservatives might want to let gays and lesbians in Vermont show us what "marriage is really worth and what it means" before extending this social experiment to the rest of the country through judicial fiat. But that's just like those conservatives, always enforcing the conformity of the future to the past, unlike progressive heroes such as Professor Calabresi who faithfully defend the "laws of the future" enacted in 1933.

Posted by Paul Jaminet at August 4, 2003 4:08 PM