Oh, you were asking me? I see. Well, that's entirely different from stating that Roe v. Wade is a "slam dunk case for bad jurisprudence and clear judicial imposition of the judge's own personal views in place of the express will of the people" because it didn't concern other issues than abortion. It's a non sequitur to imply that a court decision on abortion is no good because it doesn't say how it can or cannot be applied to issues that the case does not concern (what I meant with "an arbitrary amount of other issues").

*edit*
As I recall - and it's been a couple of years since I read the decision on Roe v. Wade - the court made some effort in trying to affirm when the new individual becomes a legal entity. For starters, this is one instance where the decision does not apply to bestiality or incest. In the first case, the legal status of the "non-consenting" party (I dunno how to get the consent of a dog or a sheep or whatever) is unresolved and would have to be decided before being comparable to the privacy recognized in relation to abortion. In the second case, the legal status is indeed resolved, which means that the already established rights of another individual are being infringed upon. Again, it has very little to do with the abortion issue.

Well, first of all, to be more accurate, I challenged you (having neglected to put a question mark at the end of what was otherwise clearly a QUESTION.

Furthermore, you still just seem utterly incapable of the most basic concepts of logic and grammar.

NOWHERE have I suggested that Roe v. Wade lacks intellectual or is "no good" because it doesn't CONTAIN an explanation of why abortion, but not beastiality or adult incest. What I HAVE suggested is that every argument in Roe v. Wade supporting that decision COULD be equally be applied to either beastiality or adult incest, and that those who support Roe v. Wade must either explain why beatiality or adult incest are NOT protected under the "right to privacy" (and using arguments which would not also apply to abortion), OR be consistent and declare their belief that they ARE every bit as much a matter of a "right to privacy" as abortion.

If YOU believe the reasoning in Roe v. Wade is defensible, then I suggest you defend it. Let me make this a little more systematic and easier for you to do:

1. Do you believe Roe v. Wade is intellectually defensible as a reasonable interpretation of the United States Constitution?

2. Based on the arguments presented in Roe v. Wade, what, if anything in that opinion justifies abortion being a constitutional right under the right to "privacy", that would not be an equally valid argument for adult incest or beastiality being a right as well for the exact same reason?

3. Do you believe it would be a reasonable interpretation of the constitution to conclude that it contains a right to beastiality or adult incest?

4. If your answer to #3 is no, and you are unable to come up with an answer for #2, how could you defend answering "yes" (if you did) to #1?

Now on a related, but slightly broader principal:

5. What do you think should constrain a judge in terms of how they "interpret" a law? Do you agree or disagree with the following:

5a: Since the laws legitimacy in a representative republic comes only from the power of the people, a law should be read and interpreted as it was generally understood by those who gave it legitimacy at the time it was written

5b: Any basic principle or rational applied to the law, must be applied constitently. This doesn't mean that there cannot be "excpetions" to general rules or principles, but even those exceptions must be based in their own rule or principle that themselves must be equally applied. For example. If you make a general rule that nobody may play games, and the court "interprets" that rule to exclude tennis because it uses a ball, then they must ALSO apply that rational consistently and find that ANY game that uses a ball. If they say tennis yes, soccer no, they must articulate a basic rule or principle that explains that distinction, and that explanation must also be applied consistently.

5c. When the reasoning justifying an interpretation would yeild pattently absurd results if applied consistently, it is not a reasonable interpretation.

5d. An interpretation which contradicts basic and firmly established societal values is not reasonable unless there is no other reasonable interpretation of the text.

5e. When an interpretation would result in what has been consistently understood to be a power of the people or the state, the court should not give a law such an interpretation unless the text is unambiguous and clear in stating that such power is affirmatively revoked.

5f. Courts are only legitimately empowered to expound upon the meaning of the law, they have no legitimate power to create or to change the meaning.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

"non-consenting" party? So, you are stating as a legal principal, that dogs and sheep, and any animal have the same legal status as human beings for purposes of "consent"? Does that mean that it should be illegal to eat animals? I mean, we can't even eat people with their consent, surely that would mean that we can't eat animals from whom we can get NO clear consent.

Unless you are willing to explain why we can EAT animals without their consent (based on the notion that they are "parties" to interactions on par with human beings) but not have sex with them, you are back to square one.

What about CONSENSUAL adult incest? What arguments in Roe v. Wade are there which justify abortion as a fundamental right, but not CONSENSUAL adult incest? Isn't it a "private" matter as well? If not, why not?

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Well... taking a crap in public is illegal. Yet it's allowed in restroom stalls. Kinda means being in a restroom stall is for doing private business.

I really don't see a justifiable reason for outrage here.

Who exactly was harmed anyway?

Queshank

Yet it is still a PUBLIC restroom, ergo the PUBLIC has the right to regulate what "business" may or may not be engaging in.

Let me take the later part of that first, "who exactly was harmed anyway?". Leaving aside any number of answers to that question, it is a perfectly reaonable question...for legislatures and the people, NOT for courts.

That brings me to the reason for outrage. The role of a judge is to apply the law as reasonably understood, not to create its meaning. The question before the courts is not whether it is GOOD public policy or not, but whether or not it is a matter LEFT to public policy under our constitution. The answer to that is unequivocably YES. Such laws have existed since before our constitution, during and after its ratification and were never understood to be prohibited by the Constitution.

If you want sex in public restrooms to be legal, go to your legislature and convince them through the democratic process to change the law, but judges should not be CHANGING the clear and unequivocably understood meaning of the law.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

If the law were written in clear and unequivocable ways, lawyers would be all but unnecessary.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Not true. Lawyers play an important role. They are trained to specialize in drafting legal texts in a manner which anticipate a whole host of issues that the average person off the streets would not consider...however articulate they may be. And when it comes to judging, they are trained in ancient standards for the application and interpretation of legal texts to specific situations.

Just a basic example. Suppose there are two laws passed by Congress at different times, which in a very specific and relatively unforseen instance result in contradictory requirements, what should a judge do? Flip a coin? Decide which to favor based on their own personal moral and ethical views on the desired outcome? No, none of the above. What they are supposed to do--based on the Canons of Statutory Construction is to--among many other things--give priority to the most frequently enacted of otherwise equally situated laws when they come into conflict.

This is, as Justice Scalia puts it "Lawyer's Work", applying ancient standards and rules for the interpretation of legal texts, and NOT (as liberals would have us believe) weighing in on the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society"--work for which ethicists, philosophers, and theologians are far better trained to tackle.

I am just curious if you have ever familiarized yourself with the Canons of Construction, and if so, what you think of them overall, and of the individual rules themselves.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane