Antonin Scalia gave a talk at a luncheon in Bozeman Montana sponsored by the Federalist Society Monday. In it he decried the creation of new rights by the courts. His overall theme was that items that have been decided on by the court should have been left to legislatures.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a Montana audience Monday that American courts too often decide what rights we “ought to have,” when that decision instead should lie with the people, through their elected officials.
…
“I’m just pointing out what happens when you don’t stick to the original meaning of the Constitution,” he said. “The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.”
Yet the Constitution has a Bill of Rights. This would seem to imply that the Founders thought that some things were too important to be decided by either the Executive and/or Legislature. Are we required to have a Constitutional convention for every new issue that comes up if previous decisions really don’t quite apply? I think that position can only be held by those who don’t want anything to change because it is blindingly obvious that in our current partisan atmosphere it would be just this side of impossible to meet the requirements set forth for amending the Constitution.