Over 16,529,671 people are on fubar.
What are you waiting for?
The structure of government designed by the Founding Fathers is the
truly unique and powerful feature of the American Constitution, Supreme
Court Justice Antonin Scalia told members of The Heritage Foundation's President's
Club on Monday.
Justice Scalia at the November President's Club Meeting The
Bill of Rights, often held up as the highest expression of American
freedom, would have no meaning without the forms of government defined by the
rest of the Constitution, he told the nearly 1,000 conservatives packed into
Washington D.C.'s Ronald Reagan Building for the fall President's Club meeting.
The Constitution's limits on government power, for example the
division of legislative power between the House and Senate and the different
manner of election for the two bodies, ensure the Bill of Rights is more than
just words. Even the Soviet Union had a robust bill of rights, he argued, but this
was a mere parchment barrier since the rest of the country's constitution
placed no limits on the exercise of dictatorial powers.
Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan,
Justice Scalia is considered one of the court's most vocal conservatives.
He applies the meaning and definition of the document's words at the time they were written, a method he calls "originalism." This interpretation often places him at
odds with those who view the Constitution as a "living document" whose meaning
should be reinterpreted as time goes on.
