Junebug
Well-known member
He's also written several opinions concerning affirmative action that being with the sentiment "just leave us alone." Most of his views are archaic, and if he were more supported we'd all be detainees in a society that loosely resembled 1865.
His views on AA are well known. He basically thinks AA creates a stigma on blacks in high positions--as if they couldn't get it on their own but needed AA to get there. He's against AA because he thinks it ultimately harms blacks, a view that, judging by most of this board's view of him, is entirely justified.
As for his "archaic" views, it is true that he thinks the constitution should be interpreted according to its original intent/meaning. (By the way, except for the 14th Amendment, that's 1787, not 1865.) But if his views on constitutionalism prevailed, that wouldn't result in a country that looked like 1787, or at least not necessarily so. As a general matter, originalism lends itself toward a broad view of government power (with notable exceptions, most of which are based in the text of the constitution (guns, AA, and the commerce power among them)), but all that means is that the legislature has the power to enact broad laws, not that it is required to do so. Ultimately, then, originalism tends to take decisionmaking power away from the judiciary and give it to the legislature. And of course, the legislature is much more directly accountable to the people--the House every 2 years and the Senate every 6--than the judiciary, which is appointed for life. If you don't like your Congressman, you can just vote him out in 2014; if you don't like this or that particular Supreme Court justice, you have to wait for them to die (or, if you are a lefty, wait for him to "drift" in your direction). So, under originalism, the only way the country would look like 1787 would be if the legislature--and, ultimately, the people--wanted it to look that way.