Scalia Debates Canadian Supreme Court Justice Over Judicial Activism

[Doondoo]

If the framers of the Charter of Rights did not want judges to rule on moral and ethical issues, they should have said so, Mr. Justice Ian Binnie of the Supreme Court of Canada said yesterday during a freewheeling debate with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a good-natured but hard-fought debate to close a McGill University conference marking the 25th anniversary of the Charter, Judge Binnie extolled the virtues of measured judicial activism over an archaic notion of “frozen rights” that do not evolve with the times. Judge Binnie said that judges who make a fetish of determining the “original intent” of constitutional drafters are deflecting their responsibility, weakly saying that “I'm only following orders.”

“The ability of the courts to move with the times has served this country very well,” Judge Binnie said. “I say that if you erect a silo over our court system based on a theory of originalism, it is a very good reason to throw it out.”

However, Judge Scalia attacked Judge Binnie and his own U.S. Supreme Court brethren for believing that unelected judges are qualified to act as social engineers who possess a greater level of expertise in deciding morally laden issues than doctors, engineers, the U.S. Founding Fathers or “Joe Six-Pack.”

“We have become addicted to abstract moralizing,” Judge Scalia said. “It is blindingly clear that judges have no greater moral capacity than the rest of us to decide what is right.”

Judge Scalia ridiculed his court's landmark ruling legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade, saying that it was absurd to issue such a decision without deciding first when a fetus becomes a human life. “Amazing!” he said. “Of course, that question was central.”

However, Judge Binnie countered that adding and subtracting constitutional rights can become close to impossible. Every time the extension of a right is proposed in Canada, he said, “everybody jumps up with their own complaint.”

“I say that judges are as much a part of society as anyone else, and they can recognize a dead letter when they see one,” Judge Binnie said.



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070217.wxcharter17/BNStory/Front/home

[bluerum]

1. Hey, I like this Binnie guy. Some of the best arguments for activism

that I have heard in a long time.

And the italian Scallion is a hypocrite an a liar. To say the that he and his judicial cronies (supreme court and throughout the US courts system) are not imposing RW judicial activism is a lie in plain sight.

They can't call it that because they have been denouncing it for 50 years. They call it "supporting and enforcing original intent". In reality original intent is something that they must interpret from surviving documents. He knows that this gives them the leeway to impose their own brands of morality and activism and still cloak it in the fig leaf of "original intent"

What lying sacks of crap. How stupid are the American people for putting up with these morons?