NoodleFood: All Recent Comments

A daily dose of philosophical food for your noodle!

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Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 12:06:02 mst
Comment ID: #1 (link)
Name: Aeon J. Skoble
E-mail: askoble(at)REMOVETHISbridgew.edu
You're right to be outraged that a poli sci prof wouldn't know the difference between a piece of legislation and constitutional amendment, but I found it disturbingly anti-intellectual for the WSJ to say that she's "not a real doctor" because she's a prof. With all due respect to Paul, if she were a "real" doctor, why would that make her _more_ likely to know these things? This is just another pseudo-populist slap at academics. It ought to be sufficient to make fun of this particular prof for this particular blunder, without dissing all scholars wholesale.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 12:59:06 mst
Comment ID: #2 (link)
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
True enough, Aeon. I think I'm pretty well inured to those kind of below-the-belt shots from Opinion Journal -- and that's one reason that I don't read it all that often.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 13:00:28 mst
Comment ID: #3 (link)
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Oh, and I just remembered: Aeon has a good essay on anti-intellectualism in American culture in _The Simpsons and Philosophy_ volume.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 13:42:26 mst
Comment ID: #4 (link)
Name: SoftwareNerd
E-mail: softwarenerd(at)gmail.com
URL: softwarenerd.blogspot.com
The letter (as quoted) does not explain the professor's reasoning. However, her final conclusion: that the composition of the court matters is not far-fetched. No, the SCOTUS cannot overturn an amendment. However, they *could* use any chink in the wording to claim it contradicts other parts of the constitution; and, doing so, they *could* make it possible for any such amendment to have a very narrow applicability.

There's a thread on OO.net, where folks who are not ignorant of the law have made this point. I'll post a pointer some time.

Needless to say, one would hope that it does notm come to that.

Also, when politicians do this in such a large majority they must have the sympathy of a large part of the public. That is where the ignorance -- and guilt -- squarely lies.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 13:50:48 mst
Comment ID: #5 (link)
Name: Aeon J. Skoble
E-mail: askoble(at)REMOVETHISbridgew.edu
Thanks for the plug! :-) Enjoy the rest of your stay on MDI.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 17:45:21 mst
Comment ID: #6 (link)
Name: L.R.
E-mail: zenohockey(at)yahoo.com
Strange -- I thought Scalia was a model justice to congressional Republicans. None of them checked the vote in Texas v. Johnson, I bet.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 18:59:11 mst
Comment ID: #7 (link)
Name: John T. Kennedy
E-mail: jtk3(at)no-treason.com
URL: no-treason.com
"Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be said about an op-ed by a political science professor apparently ignorant of the fact that constitutional amendments are not subject to judicial review."

The Second Amendment has gotten plenty of judicial review. In practice the Supreme Court decides for itself what it's going to review, and it might decide that such an amendment contradicted the first amendment and thus was null and void absent the repeal of the first.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 23:46:53 mst
Comment ID: #8 (link)
Name: Mike Hardy
E-mail: hardy(at)math.umn.edu
:: the Supreme Court

:: .....

:: might decide that such an amendment contradicted the
:: first amendment and thus was null and void absent the
:: repeal of the first.

Well, I suppose they might decide 2 + 2 = 5.

But they could also decide that if the two amendments
contradict each other then the new one supercedes the
First and so we no longer have free speech.

(BTW, you do realize, don't you, that normal humans,
as opposed to lawyers, regard the word "absent" as a
adjective rather than a preposition?)

Friday, June 30, 2006 at 0:48:54 mst
Comment ID: #9 (link)
Name: John T. Kennedy
E-mail: jtk3(at)no-treason.com
URL: http://no-treason.com
"But they could also decide that if the two amendments contradict each other then the new one supercedes the First and so we no longer have free speech."

I wouldn't put it past them. I've listened to recordings of the Supreme Court deliberations and they are astonishing for their muddled thinking.

Friday, June 30, 2006 at 4:27:40 mst
Comment ID: #10 (link)
Name: softwarenerd
E-mail: softwarenerd(at)gmail.com
URL: http://softwarenerd.blogspot.com
"[SCOTUS] are astonishing for their muddled thinking".

That's because a lot of the time, they're simply concocting rationalizations for the conclusions they already arrived at through other means. People understand this well enough when they refer to judges as being left or right. The court is becoming (perhaps it always was) a kind of "super-senate". It's a group of 9 oldies who want to keep the temporal swings of democracy in check, while allowing the secular [as in "long term"] will of democracy to change the law.

The way the amendment is written, the judges have ample wiggle room. Not sure how many of them will use it.

Friday, June 30, 2006 at 22:12:15 mst
Comment ID: #11 (link)
Name: John T. Kennedy
E-mail: jtk3(at)no-treason.com
URL: http://no-treason.com
The point is that whether or not the Supreme Court is supposed to review Constitutional amendments, in practice it will at it's discretion.

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