So after Governor Palin couldn't think of any Supreme Court decisions in her interview with Katie Couric she said she thought there was an inherent right to privacy in the constitution.

Palin got a follow-up question from Couric about whether she believes there's a constitutional 'right to privacy'.

And Palin said, yes.

Now, I suppose it's certain possible to believe in a constitutional right to privacy and also oppose Roe. But the right to privacy, as Couric says in the interview, is one of the cornerstones of Roe. And in the public debate yes or no on the right to privacy is something pretty close to a proxy for your position on abortion rights.  Because as far as the legality of the decision, the right to an abortion hinges on a right to privacy.

Now, I don't pretend to be an expert on the current right wing thing, but generally the legal attack on Roe is rooted in a so called "strict constructionist" perspective arguing that "privacy" is never explicitly guaranteed by the Constiution.  

So the funnies part to me is that Palin not only screwed up the answer on the right to privacy answer, it seemed like she'd never even heard of it before.

But I hear she makes one HELL of a mooseburger.

Of course there can be some right of privacy without needing to support Roe v. Wade.  

The 4th Amend clearly has some privacy aspects in the original intent, but that does not necessarily mean that the edges of interpretation are present.  I.e., you can believe in the right to privacy in your home and papers, without thinking that the State can't ban a specific medical procedure

Many liberal experts, like Tribe of Harvard, agree there is a privacy aspect to the 4th and others, but think Roe was still wrongly decided.

In short, her answer makes legal sense.  

P.S.  I am a moderate GOP, former Dem, who agrees abortion should be legal, but it is not a constitutional matter, but one of state policy.  I still believe in a constitutional right to privacy.

-- Modified on 10/2/2008 4:37:44 AM

-- Modified on 10/2/2008 4:39:27 AM

most of our politicians need a refresher on what the founding documents of our nation are... sadly they ignore them... the last REAL consitutional expert who was in congress was Senator Sam Irwin

The question was which other Supreme Court ruling has she disagreed with .
Palin should have fired back to Katie ,I know the one you most disagreed with and that would be Bush v Gore

You had one sentence in your original post about whether there were other rulings she didn't agree with.

You then spent about 150 words on the right to privacy. If you look at your post, most of it is about the right disagreeing with right to privacy, strict construction, etc.

That is why I responded to that aspect of the post.  To say that you were talking about something else either shows a lack of clarity in thinking and writing, since most of the post did not deal with that, or an attempt to avoid the question.

I took Constitutional LAW  law so if you want the most recent ruling I disagree with it would be Boumediene v Bush and we should not be giving habeaus corpus rights to detainees who are not US citizens.

-- Modified on 10/2/2008 1:31:47 PM

First, I not only took Con law, a huge part of my job is involved in Con Law - criminal defense.  
I also have a post graduate degree from NYU in Con law.

However, that is neither here nor there.  

Most of your first post was about right to privacy.  I addressed that and you said your post was really about Couric's question.

I parsed your first post to show that it was not primarily about that question.

Now you mention a ruling you disagree with, as if that has any relevance to what had been said before.

Palin  like others need to quit saying Federalist  when referring to States Rights . I know she is talking  about it like Nixon did but I still hate the term used in that manner

Palin should have fired back to Katie ,I know the one you most disagreed with and that would be Bush v Gore
That would have thrown little Katie off guard and would be played over and over .
I think you are talking to the other poster on this manner more then me but ya gotta admit that would have been a witty and clever reply

-- Modified on 10/2/2008 2:12:24 PM

-- Modified on 10/2/2008 2:14:07 PM

While I'm no constitutional expert, I do try to see both sides of an argument and can usually detect right from wrong.  In the case of Boumediene v. Bush, I think the ruling was correct.  I've attached an opEd that sums up my position more eloquently than I.

I think the crux of the issue, in this case, was that there was no process in place to determine who actually was an enemy combatant. The Bush administration asserted that they had sole discretion determining who fit in this nebulous category.  For me, this caused great discomfort, as we all know how zealous this administration was and continues to be regarding the execution of supposed "War of Terror".  Any and all, citizen and non-citizen, could be declared an enemy-combatant and held indefinitely without charge or proof that they were actually combatants.

The concept of Habeas corpus extents back into the 1600s and is widely viewed as a natural law, if I'm using the term correctly. It as evolved to prevent people (and I'm distguishing from citizens) from being withheld with out charge and unjustly by government.  Our own government has supported this in the past when condemming other nations for holding their own citizens without charge.  It is also used by most democratic nations when protesting the incareration of their own citizenry by foreign governments without charge.  I daresay that habeas corpus is a human right...not a constitutional right.

I've also included a link of a timeline of habeas corpus.  This is from the ACLU but I think it accurately reflects the history and concept of habeas corpus.  http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/habeastimeline.html

I know this is a tough issue when we are addressing the treat of terrorism. But we cannot allow the gov't, even in the name of security, to imprison people without proof or judicial review.  Consider that even today, terrorism laws are being used to prosecuted every day crimes.  The gov't does this because those laws significantly lower the bar for prosecution.  Those same laws can and will be used against US citizens.  So in this case...I think the Supreme Court was right.

Atrocious.

-- Modified on 10/2/2008 3:57:25 PM

In the history of the United States, the case with the least precedent was the enemy combatant case.

For over 200 years, people captured in combat never had a right to challenge any aspect of their detention.  

My uncle's job in WW II was to guard "enemy combatants," i.e., people captured in areas where the conflict was raging.  I seem to remember that there hundreds of thousands of them in the US, although I admit my memory may be off.  I know the number was huge.

None of them had any right to challenge any aspect of their detention. They were allowed visits from the Red Cross and certain humanitarian standards applied to their captivity.  But that was it.  

The same applied in every war, declared or undeclared in the history of the United States.  Vietnam, WW I, Korea, you name it.

Cases are reported for the last few hundred years, preceding the founding of the US.  Try and find one case where the plaintiff was a person captured in a combat zone demanding a trial to determine the validity of his confinement.  Not one case in hundreds of years even raising the issue.  

Indeed, going outside of the US, in the history of warfare, there were two things to do with an enemy combatant detained in war:  Kill him or detain him "for the duration."

This case broke with all history of every war and every legal precedent in the US.

Kelo had some basis in history.

"Public use" for eminent domain is one of those terms that is very hard to define.  there are just some areas that have vague precedents. Anything involving words like "reasonable," an inherent aspect of "probable cause," in the fourth amendment is hard to define.

Even cases like Brown v. Board of Education at least had state court decisions and others laws that it was building upon, even if it was a landmark in its own area.

The enemy combatant case had no precedent and reversed the entirety of history.

Public use should not include enriching a private party (person or corporation) such that said party then pays higher taxes, builds private housing, builds a shopping mall, blah, blah, blah.

Take my house to build a road, a bridge,  a school, a park, even a bike path. But not condos, a mall, a restaurant.

I pray for the day that a member of the SCOTUS gets booted out of their property under this ruling.