Tuesday, April 15, 2003

The Pryor nomination (cont'd)

Just time for a short entry this morning in the continuing series on 11th Circuit nominee Bill Pryor. This one comes from a speech. His speeches are a treasure trove of extremist ideas. Here are his remarks made on a panel at a Federalist Society gathering, commenting on the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Virginia, in which the Court (by a vote of 7-1) struck down the all-male policy of the Virginia Military Institute:

In some contexts the Court has been both anti-democratic and insensitive to federalism. ... [In 1996], the Court ruled that the people of Virginia were somehow prohibited by the 14th Amendment from maintaining an all-male military academy. Even the Chief Justice concurred, never mind that for more than a century after the 14th Amendment was enacted both the federal government and many state governments maintained all-male military academies. Never mind the fact that the people of the United States did not ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. We now have new rules of political correctness for decision making in the equal protection arena.

In the constitutional vision of Bill Pryor, even Chief Justice Rehnquist -- not to mention Justices Kennedy and O'Connor -- is in the thrall of political correctness. In the constitutional vision of Bill Pryor, the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment would logically include no protection against gender-based governmental discrimination. After all, the brand of "originalism" that allows him to conclude that the 19th century historical practice of sex discrimination in military academies is dispositive of the Constitutional question, would also yield the conclusion that exclusion of women from owning property, from voting, from serving on juries ... all such things are perfectly consistent with the Equal Protection clause, to an "originalist" looking to historical practice. If Chief Justice Rehnquist does not strike you as the embodiment of liberal politically correct judicial activism, then please ask your Senator to oppose Pryor's nomination.

posted by sam 9:58 AM 0 comments

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