Monday, July 04, 2005

Teddy Kennedy, Originalist?

In his long-winded piece today, Teddy Kennedy counts five times that delegates at the constitutional convention voted not to give the power to make judicial appointments to the executive. I'm a little rusty on Madison's Notesso I'll have to take his word for it. (I wonder how many aides he had scour the source.) The irony is that the judges Kennedy wants tend not to do this kind of work; they tend to substitute modern sociology for the kind of originalism Kennedy himself exhibits -- at least in this part of the piece. Actually Kennedy's piece is all over the place, and we never really hear why the framers finally gave the power to make appointments to the president. But let's hear it for judges who read the Constitution, the Federalist, and Madison's Notes rather than modern social science.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In his long-winded piece today, Teddy Kennedy counts five times that delegates at the constitutional convention voted... ... (I wonder how many aides he had scour the source.)

Five, I'll wager.

3:02 AM  

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