Christian fundamentalists are not qualified to be judges

We learn from Harriet Meirs's church members that she considers herself an "originalist" in interpreting both the Constitution and the Bible. That is, those documents are to be understood literally according to the words as written, i.e. without symbolism, allegory, metaphor, or abstract of some basic purpose.

The problem when interpreting the Constitution in that fashion is obvious. The Bill of Rights, in particular, is not a document of statutes but of principles, and because the document could never be exhaustive enough to cover every real world circumstance the Supreme Court must necessarily view it as an abstract. "Necessarily", that is, only if one is an honest justice.

But such a literal posture is even more telling of a person's ingenuousness when considering the Biblical realm. The problem there is that the book is blatantly contradictory and unscientific and can not be reconciled to any sense except by resorting to hideous contortions and suspensions of logic.

Ms. Meirs ostensibly believes that both the first and second chapters of Genesis are literally true despite the patency of two conflicting accounts of creation. In order to "believe" such a thing she must first accept a position as dogmatic truth then shoehorn the text in comical fashion back to it.

Ms. Meirs ostensibly believes that the story of Noah's Ark and a worldwide flood is true, despite mountains of evidence which say otherwise. Again, Mrs. Meirs, as do all fundamentalists, accepts the truth of a proposition then ignores or twists the evidence to fit. That habit is exactly the reverse of how a qualified judge would reach a legitimate decision.

Now, you might say that Ms. Meirs is capable of applying different mechanisms when making faith-based decisions versus legal ones. I would agree, but I see no reason at all to trust her to do it. If a person is willing to lock even herself into some faith-based presupposition despite available evidence then it's foolish for the rest of us to expect that she'd be honest about anything else.

 

How did you get that from what he wrote? I see nothing in there to that effect.

 

If she can twist the words of the Constitution to get a conservative, originalist interpretation to make part of her rulings, she's doing nothing that Stevens and Ginsberg aren't doing by getting liberal interpretations out of it.

Stevens and Ginsberg even go as far as to draw from International law to get their interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. Just because you don't want conservative Thomas-like rulings doesn't mean she shouldn't be on the court.

 

Guess I've been here long enough to see enough of his posts to ascertain that. Call it insider knowledge.

 

Where is this coming from? Who are you arguing with? I just wanted to know how marc got his assertion from Rex's entry.

And I've never argued that she should or should not be on the court.

 

You do realize that an "originalist" is one that interprets the Constitution based on what the Founders meant when they wrote it.

Scalia on the Constitution

Theories of Constitutional Interpretation

Now, originalists are different that strict constructionsists since originalists don't believe if something isn't expressly in the constitution it is unconstitutional. An example of this would be if a constitution says that punishment by hanging, beheading, and firing squad were prohibited. A strict constructionist would more than likely view only those methods of execution a s being prohibited and everything else is allowed. However, an originalist may look into why this particular clause was included and then come to the conclusion that those forms of execution were the only ones around at the time of writing, so the originalist will probably conclude that all capital punishment is prohibited.

You should really learn exactly what a term means before you go and bitch about it.

 

every christian is totally unqualified to be rational, not just fundamentalist christians. almost every politican and every judge and everyone elected to anything claims to be religious, including democrats. there is nothing you can do about it, and in practice in never really makes a huge difference anyways.

its not like a we have any chance in hell that a justice would not be christian or jewish, so why bother.

 

Rex,
Your side lost the election, neither you nor the Democrats get to pick who the nominees are for the Supreme Court so I suggest you learn to live with it.

Why is it that the Republicans act like they lost the election and the democrats
act like they won.
The white house, Senate and Congress is the Republicans to lose and they are doing
a pretty good job of it.