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Home Papers:
29 September 2010
A Skeptical View of Constitution Worship
The (US) Supreme Court for much of its history has approved of racial segregation and disenfranchisement, the subordination of women and gays and lesbians, the criminalization of dissident speech, and a very narrow conception of the separation of church and state and of the rights of criminal defendants.
In the end, we, the American people, determine what sort of country we live in–the Constitution and the courts play a relatively marginal role in that process.
To paraphrase the great jurist with the greatest of names—the Honorable Learned Hand—no constitution and no court are going to rescue us from white supremacy or sexism or homophobia or Japanese American internment or FBI profiling of Arabs and Muslims.
To believe otherwise is a delusion, and possibly quite a dangerous one.