In a recent interview with Politico, former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer claimed that the current conservative majority on the court will give the U.S. a Constitution that "no one wants."
Breyer spoke to the media outlet ahead of the release of his new book, titled, "Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism." In it, the former liberal justice spent time criticizing the interpretations his former conservative colleagues have been making in landmark Supreme Court cases.
He elaborated on these points in the interview. Politico Magazine senior writer Ankush Khardori reported, "If the court continues to deploy their methods of interpretation, Breyer told me, ‘We will have a Constitution that no one wants.’ It’s a remarkable statement from a former Supreme Court justice."
The journalist asked Breyer about his point in the book warning about "originalism," noting that Breyer has called this lens of interpretation "inherently ‘regressive,’" writing that it "will not permit modern solutions to modern problems" as well as consigning "us to a set of views and values that predominated during a period when many groups of people today were not equal citizens."
Breyer affirmed those points in the interview, declaring, "When the founders were thinking about and writing the words of the Constitution and protecting certain basic rights in the Constitution, women were not really part of the political process. They didn’t have a right to vote, and there was slavery, and the slaves weren’t part of [the political process either]."
This is a good illustration between conservatism vs. and the Left. The Left honestly believes that the original Constitution codifies slavery and women as second class citizens, when conservatives do not. In fact, the Constitution does not really touch on the issue of slavery except for the fugitive clause.
As in the other references in the Constitution dealing with slavery, the words "slave" and "slavery" are not used in this clause. Historian
Donald Fehrenbacher believes that throughout the Constitution there was the intent to make it clear that slavery existed only under state law, not federal law. In this instance, Fehrenbacher concludes:
The genius of the Constitution allowed basic freedoms for all without mentioning race or sex which is why it can still be used today with our current laws. The implication for not mentioning race or sex is that it has no real relevance, something that is far more Progressive than what you see the Left espouse every single day.
There is also the 3/5 person clause in the Constitution which dealt with population levels related to representation. Most think of the compromise as racist, that a black slave is not 3/5 of a human being because they are a full human being. But in reality, it was used by abolitionists to reduce the political power of the slave states. Slave states could not use the slaves to be counted as population, thus reducing their power in Congress. I would even argue that they should not have been counted at all since they were not being represented by their representatives.
That aside, these items were later repealed in the Constitution, and rightly so.
The Constitution never made the claim that it was perfect, which is why the Founding Fathers allowed it to be repealed or added to. But it seems to me that there is an underlying hatred by the Left towards the Constitution. It is an attitude that the Constitution is so fundamentally flawed, repealing and/or amending the items that you see as having flaws is not the solution, rather, the solution is simply to interpret those flaws out of the text itself, thus bypassing the amendment or repealing process. It is the attitude that it takes far too much time and effort to do so, and it takes far too many voices and opinions to hear, so the only solution is to interpret what you don't like in the Constitution away instead.
