printThe following is excerpted from my latest column, “Justice Ginsburg And You: 2 Peas In A Pod?”:
“I would not look to the US constitution,” said US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an interview with Al-Hayat TV. “If I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012, I might look at the constitution of South Africa, Canada … and the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Al-Hayat’s correspondent had solicited Ginsburg’s advice on drafting the Egyptian constitution.
Go easy on Ginsburg; she’s a lot like you. She shares a disdain for America’s founding document with millions, maybe even a majority, of her countrymen. The US Constitution is flouted daily by the people’s representatives, and has been amended and reinterpreted to the point of no return.
The governing documents that excite Bader Ginsburg’s admiration are documents of positive rights. The American Constitution is by-and-large a charter of negative liberties, as the president once described it derisively.
A positive right is state-manufactured, usually at the behest of political majorities. Rights to a job, water, clothes, food, education and medical care are examples. Some of the European covenants canvassed by Bader consider “freely chosen” desirable work as a human right. Ditto adequate “rest and leisure.”
Once these needs are recognized as rights, they become state-enforceable, legal claims against other, less-valued members of society (“the rich”). Someone who hasn’t had a vacation, or has not reached his career apogee, gets to collect on such claims.
In the case of natural rights—the only founding truths the nation’s fathers could have conceived of, given their classical liberal philosophical framework—the duty is merely a mitts-off duty. My right to life means you must not murder me. My right to liberty means you dare not enslave me. My right to property means you can’t take what’s mine—not 35 percent of it, or 15 percent. Nada. And you have no right to stop me from taking the necessary acquisitive action for my survival, so long as I, in turn, respect the same restrictions.
As an instantiation of a constitutional democracy governed in accordance with state-minted rights, take the new South Africa, where almost everyone knows someone who has been raped, robbed, hijacked, murdered, or all of the above, in violation of natural law.
Not that you’d know it, but the poor South Africans enjoy a constitutional right to live free of all forms of violence, “public” or “private” in origin. Section 12 of their progressive constitution guarantees the “Freedom and Security of the Person.” Clearly “progressive” doesn’t necessarily spell progress, as nowhere does this wordy but worthless document state whether South Africans may actually defend this most precious of rights.
If anything, self-defense can be an offense in progressive South Africa. …
Knowing what you now know about the South African Constitution—what is it do you suppose Ginsburg dislikes about one of the greatest documents of political philosophy?
From all accounts, it is that the US Constitution is principally a charter of negative liberties. …”
Read the complete column, “Justice Ginsburg And You: 2 Peas In A Pod?”
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Another excellent piece, Miss Ilana. We-the-ONCE-People of the United States are victims of our own greed, sloth, complacency, and willful ignorance of our history. Justice Ginsburg’s views are nothing new of course, but the populace behaves as if this is some new revelation. Listen to the “conservative” Republican candidates laud the Constitution, and yet in the same breath they’ll spout some proposal that clearly flies right in the face of our founding document’s original intent. And then they dare to criticize Dr. Paul as a nut! Reality simply won’t tolerate such departures from sense for much longer!
Thanks again!
Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Liberal Jew, from New York, Harvard degree, ACLU background, appointed by Clinton etc. etc. ad nauseuum. No wonder she’s an anti American radical. She should be impeached. But, then again so should two thirds of the Washington DC gang, in both parties.
The continued diversification of the Supreme Court will result, some day soon, of a rainbow coalition of microcephalics. Until such time I would urge Ginsburg, (Pelosi, et al) not yet reposit the Constitution to the reliquary. Even if it ceases to be useful in its original intent, it relentlessly demonstrates that an inanimate object can be smarter than humans however much they are mis-educated or re-engineered.
“Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Liberal, from New York, Harvard degree, ACLU background, appointed by Clinton” Is plenty James. I am really tired of hearing “Jew” We refer to Pelosi as ‘that Liberal “blank” but never ‘wop or Italian’ if that is her heritage. Romney is Mormon, others are Catholic; and I don’t see the problem; myself, free range Christian and I’m not proud that Ted Kennedy was Irish. I mean no insult, just had a long hard day. My opinion about Ginsburg- she is the best example for the argument that women should stay home, in her case, barefoot and no progeny to screw up the world, and I’m a women’s libber in the Libertarian concept.
The continued diversification of the Supreme Court…
What diversification are you referring? It’s composed of 6 Catholics and 3 Jews. True diversity would give Protestants at least 4 members.
I’m somewhat surprised the esteemed Justice Ginsburg didn’t reference the constitution of the former Soviet Union. It was a beautiful, if not utopian document. Even with all of these wonderful rights promulgated by the state, the Soviet Union was an awful place to live.