Dan Lipka Web Log

I had a long rant about about this, but I think it missed what should be a clean point. The constitution only deals with a few, limited number of specific items. It was limited by the times and knowledge of the founders. Almost all of the cases argued before the Supreme Court are not directly mentioned in the constitution and require a vast amount of interpretation. The idea of "originalism", in that a Justice "should interpret its text as text, and understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. So that meaning doesn't change over time and it's not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it." This is just ludicrous. The constitution doesn't mention anything about abortion, healthcare, marriage, political contributions, or hundreds of other issues. It is up to a Justice to make judgements that are consistent with that which is in the constitution using their own personal experiences and expertise to come to

 "Joe Biden, are you planning to increase the number of Supreme Court Justices if you win?" It is a simple question and Biden and Harris refuse to answer it. However, the response should be easy, which is  "We are focused on winning this election and saving this country. We currently have no plans to pack the court and honestly aren't considering it at this time. But we haven't really considered such an important decision and there are many, many more important things at this time." And if Biden wins and wants to pack the Supreme Court, he can do whatever we wants. The political fall out after the election would be much less than it is now.  The reason he should deny any thoughts of packing the Supreme Court is simple. There are some conservative and independent voters in which the Supreme Court is their highest priority. As of today, they have won and will have a solid majority on the court, so they are more willing to dump Trump because the courts are no l