MITT IS IT v 2.0

Here's a headline you won't see in November: "Mitt Wins!"


Romney will win the New Hampshire primary tonight. 
Ron Paul is second, with Henry Cabot Lodge, Harold Stassen and others bringing up the rear. 


JUVENILE JUSTICE? 


In answer to a statement in the comments on the previous post that  no juvenile in the US had ever been executed for a crime, we did a quick search and were astounded to see that NINE...count em...NINE juveniles were executed from 2000 to 2005 when the supreme court (Motto: "Better late than never") put an end to the madness.  But up until 2005 the US proudly stood with Iran, North Korea and China as the only countries who taught those rascally kids a lesson they would never forget. 


NEW BLOGGER
Keep your eyes open for our new guest blogger who, like El Capitan, has been awarded unfettered blogging privileges. Membership has its rewards. 


PRIVACY


There was some chatter across the legal blogs about Mitt Romney indirectly attacking the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut which is credited with establishing  the "right to privacy." Griswold was about the ability to buy condoms. But in a much larger sense Griswold more than any other case highlights the problems with constitutional analysis and illustrates why objectivism as applied to constitutional law is an excellent lens. 


Justice Douglas found a right to privacy in emanations from a  "penumbra"  from the bill of rights. A penumbra is  a region where some or all of the light is obscured. When applied to constitutional analysis, finding a right emanating from  a penumbra is another way of a judge saying "the facts of this case disturb me enough to invent something to fix the result and skewer the decision to a result that I personally want regardless of what the law is." 


There is no right to privacy in the constitution. If you ask us personally if there should be, the answer would be an unequivocal "yes!". And we approve of the "result" in Griswold. But the the method to reach that result is dangerous. 


No other right has ever been found lurking in the elusive penumbra since Justice Douglas's remarkable discovery. But what if Thomas and Roberts and Scalia and Alito can convince one of their brethren that they have "discovered" the right of a fetus not to be aborted lurking within a penumbra of the constitution?  How about if, after careful scrutiny, they found that right just out of common eyesight and lurking within the penumbra of the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?  How wonderful would the analysis of Griswold look to those who otherwise celebrate the discovery of the right to privacy? 


Our point is that when you reach the upper most echelon of constitutional analysis, the method of arriving at the result (the philosophy if you will) is more important than the result itself.


See You In Court.