{"id":1986040,"date":"2023-07-30T05:03:02","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T09:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-moral-hazard-for-the-constitution\/"},"modified":"2023-07-30T05:14:09","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T09:14:09","slug":"a-moral-hazard-for-the-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-moral-hazard-for-the-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Constitution&#8217;s Moral Hazard"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">6<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fa-moral-hazard-for-the-constitution%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1986040&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div>\n<h2>Unveiling the Anchoring\u200c Truths \u2063of the Constitution<\/h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Hadley Arkes, emeritus professor of political \u2063science \u200band jurisprudence at Amherst, models his latest book on C.S. Lewis&#8217;s <i>Mere Christianity<\/i>. Lewis aimed\u200b to compress the\u200d fundamentals of his faith into a set\u200c of\u2062 &#8220;principles that are accessible\u200c even to children.&#8221; Arkes, \u200bwho \u200dhas articulated a\u2064 natural-law and natural-rights-based approach to\u2062 constitutional interpretation, endeavors to state\u2064 the &#8220;anchoring truths&#8221; of that doctrine in\u200b a manner understandable &#8220;by virtually everyone,&#8221; without \u200bprior\u200c philosophical or jurisprudential training. He believes \u2062that &#8220;ordinary people&#8221; can be brought to grasp &#8220;principles of common \u200csense \u200dthat are far more precise, with a practical import,&#8221; than homilies like &#8220;be kind,&#8221; and can\u2064 be shown how those truths apply to constitutional issues.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The doctrine of natural law \u200cwas largely a construction of the great \u2062Catholic theologian St. Thomas \u200bAquinas (1225-1274),\u2062 who sought to reconcile \u2064Aristotle&#8217;s prudence-guided \u2063ethical teaching\u200c with the absolute commands of biblical faith. But\u200b while Arkes cites both Aristotle\u200c and Aquinas, his account of natural law draws more on\u200d the 18th-century\u2062 Scottish &#8220;moral sense&#8221; theorist Thomas Reid, whose influence on\u200b the \u2063American Founder James Wilson he stresses, along with the doctrine of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In their \u200cspirit, he\u2062 aims to \u200bprovide a purely rational \u200dor deductive account of the morality that is already implicit in our Constitution, since\u2063 it reflects the sense \u200dof right and wrong that members of civilized\u2064 societies possess or \u2063take for \u200cgranted.<\/p>\n<p>Arkes&#8217;s <i>b\u00eate noire<\/i> is &#8220;the passion for\u200d relativism&#8221; that has infected our culture and constitutional understanding in\u200c recent decades, &#8220;to the point where people with\u200b advanced\u200b degrees forcefully\u200d insist \u200bthat\u2064 we cannot tell the difference between a male\u2064 and a female&#8221;: \u200bThink of then-Supreme Court\u200d nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson&#8217;s stated incapacity during\u200b her confirmation hearing to define a woman, because she was &#8220;not a \u2062biologist.&#8221; Of\u200c course Jackson knows just\u2064 as well as anyone, regardless of\u200b education, what a woman\u200c is and how she differs from a man. (Had \u2063a man been chosen instead \u2064of Jackson \u200cto replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the\u200b Court, \u2064strong objections\u2064 would\u200d have been raised by feminists, even if \u200dthe candidate said he was &#8220;really&#8221; a woman.) What restrained Jackson from acknowledging that \u2064awareness was the fear of offending an ideologically motivated coterie who insist that &#8220;gender&#8221; is &#8220;socially constructed,&#8221; so being male or female\u2063 is a matter of individual decision, \u200bonce one is liberated from \u2064society&#8217;s constraints.<\/p>\n<p>In upholding our common-sense awareness of the natural ground of sex differences, as on most of the issues\u2063 he takes up,\u200b Arkes situates himself on the &#8220;conservative&#8221; side of\u2063 today&#8217;s constitutional debates. But\u200c he denies that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-judges-need-the-anchoring-truths-of-natural-law-not-just-conservative-legal-philosophy\/\" title=\"Judges require Natural Law's anchoring truths, not solely conservative legal philosophy.\">relativistic approach<\/a> to\u200d human reality is limited to the left. He \u200bcites the tortured reading\u2063 of the word \u2063&#8221;sex&#8221; in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which\u200c forbids discrimination on the base of sex as well \u200cas race, by Trump-appointed \u2063Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch in the <i>Bostock<\/i> \u2062case. Contrary to any plausible reading of what the authors of the law had \u2062in \u200bmind, Gorsuch, in his \u2063majority opinion, interpreted it to include &#8220;sexual orientation&#8221; and &#8220;gender identity,&#8221; so as to protect \u200bthe \u200bequal rights of the &#8220;transgendered.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In reality, Gorsuch&#8217;s \u200brewriting of the Civil Rights Act was not an instance (as \u200cits \u200bdefenders maintained) of \u2063textualist or originalist jurisprudence at all: Taking \u2062the word &#8220;sex&#8221; in the sense in which it was universally used in 1964, nobody could interpret it to refer to\u200b a constructed &#8220;identity.&#8221; But it is on \u200bthis ground\u2062 that Arkes distinguishes his\u200c approach to \u2062constitutional interpretation from \u2063the method espoused by most constitutional conservatives today. He\u2064 blames textualist\u200c justices like Antonin Scalia\u200b and Samuel \u200cAlito for grounding their\u2064 rejection of progressive rewritings of the Constitution, such as the invention \u200cof\u2064 a right to abortion \u2062that is nowhere stated or implied in that document, on the fact that the test gives judges no \u200cauthority to decide such matters. They would rather\u2063 leave\u200c it \u200dto our elected leaders to decide.<\/p>\n<p>To be sure,\u200d Arkes professes friendship for Scalia\u2063 and Alito and never portrays them \u200das moral relativists in their personal beliefs \u2064about matters \u2064like abortion or the redefinition of marriage.\u200d But\u2062 this deferral\u2064 of authority over such issues to elected officials makes them in Arkes&#8217;s view legal &#8220;positivists,&#8221; no different\u2064 in their jurisprudence \u200cfrom their progressive\u200b opponents. To fulfill their judicial roles properly, Arkes maintains, \u2063they should simply have\u200d declared practices like abortion and same-sex \u200dmarriage wrong on \u200cthe \u2063ground\u2063 that\u200d they violate the \u200bprinciples of natural\u2062 law to which the authors of \u2064the Declaration of Independence \u200cprofessed their allegiance, and\u2062 which they understood the\u200b Constitution (as Abraham Lincoln did) as designed to uphold. (Arkes is no less insistent \u2064that\u2064 school \u200bsegregation \u200cshould have been declared unconstitutional on the same ground, rather than on\u200d the Warren Court&#8217;s specious social-science &#8220;evidence&#8221; of its\u200c harm.)<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately\u200b for Arkes, he has no effective answer to the\u200c objection that judges like Scalia would offer to his proposal \u200bfor basing rulings on moral issues directly on principles of natural as distinguished from constitutional and \u200cstatutory texts: Won&#8217;t progressive judges\u200d similarly invoke what they call a higher \u2063law, ungrounded in the text, to justify the \u2064very policies Arkes opposes? No \u200cinvocation \u2064of liberal \u2062causes like same-sex\u200c marriage,\u200b <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/disabled-immigrant-sues-biden-over-quota-blocking-him-from-contracts-because-of-his-race-and-sex\/\" title=\"Disabled Immigrant Sues Biden Over Quota Blocking Him From Contracts Because Of His Race And Sex\">race-based preferences<\/a> in employment or\u200c school \u200badministration, or the demand that\u2062 schools indoctrinate students with \u200dwoke \u200cideology will neglect to invoke such pious phrases as \u2063&#8221;human dignity,&#8221; &#8220;children&#8217;s rights,&#8221; or &#8220;redressing historical injustices.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Arkes can only recommend that conservative jurists &#8220;show them\u2062 where\u2064 their reasoning is wrong.&#8221; Like his liberal jurisprudential opponents,\u200d such as \u200dthe late Ronald Dworkin, Arkes would turn deliberations over \u2062constitutional and legal cases into seminars on moral philosophy. \u200cI know\u2062 of \u200dno precedent for this understanding of the judicial role among the deliberations \u200bof those who wrote and \u2062ratified the\u2063 Constitution. Nor, given the current political and academic <i>zeitgeist<\/i>, is there reason\u2062 to think \u2063that\u2063 in any such seminar, Arkes&#8217;s side would win.<\/p>\n<p>The problem lies in setting up a false\u200b dichotomy\u200b between two opposed models of the judicial role:\u2062 the positivism \u200cadvocated by Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrongly celebrated by liberals as \u2064an advocate\u200b of\u2064 liberty when he was \u200ca nihilist who\u2064 (as Arkes observes) wished to \u2063expunge all moral language from the law, on the \u200done hand, and a natural-law jurisprudence, liberated from the\u200b text, \u200dwhich is unlikely to advance the very causes that Arkes favors.\u2063 There is in\u2063 fact a third way, espoused \u200bby judges who appreciate the constitutional\u2063 limits of\u2064 their role, \u200cyet manage to interpret the texts they\u2063 address in a manner that appreciates \u200btheir moral \u2063context. If they forgo Arkes&#8217;s\u200c na\u00efve, Kantian faith that simply\u2064 appealing \u2064to a universal moral sense\u200b will\u2064 settle\u200c all \u200dcontroversial constitutional \u2064issues, such judges and \u200dlegal\u200d scholars will \u200cactually learn much from the way \u2063Arkes addresses the specifics of these problems.<\/p>\n<p>In imitation of the late constitutional scholar Walter Berns, Arkes explains how properly applying the \u2062constitutional text to certain issues entails making moral judgments rather than relying only on ostensibly &#8220;neutral&#8221; principles. This is particularly evident\u2063 in cases involving the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech. \u200dArkes properly \u200cstresses the \u2063Supreme Court&#8217;s \u200cexclusion in its 1942 <i>Chaplinsky<\/i> ruling of mere &#8220;fighting \u2064words&#8221; (in this \u200dcase, \u200binsults launched through bullhorns and directed at local churches on a Sunday morning) from the Amendment&#8217;s protection. (Insults, designed to provoke, fall outside the category of reasoned debate \u200dthat the Founders aimed to promote.)<\/p>\n<p>By the same logic, Arkes\u2064 persuasively\u2062 argues, the Court erred in its 1971 ruling in\u200d <i>Cohen<\/i> v. <i>California<\/i> upholding a young \u200dman&#8217;s\u200d right to wear a jacket with the legend &#8220;F\u2014 \u200bthe \u200dDraft&#8221; in a courthouse. On purely relativistic\u200d grounds, Justice Harlan \u200cstated that &#8220;one man&#8217;s vulgarity is \u2064another man&#8217;s lyric,&#8221; that the jacket&#8217;s slogan constituted\u200c &#8220;political speech,&#8221; and that government \u200chad no\u2063 right to &#8220;cleanse&#8221; public debate\u200c of vulgarity. Far from upholding an originalist or textualist interpretation of the Constitution, Harlan and his brethren were simply imposing a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-moral-hazard-for-the-constitution\/\" title=\"Constitution's Moral Hazard\">late-20th-century\u2063 libertarian doctrine<\/a> that \u2064would deny a community the right to uphold\u200b elemental standards of decent public behavior.<\/p>\n<p>Even\u200d worse, \u2064but following the same line of thinking, was the decision, defended\u2062 by the American \u200cCivil Liberties Union and upheld by the courts, to \u2064uphold the right of the American Nazi Party \u2063to stage a \u2063march through the heavily Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois\u2062 (the home of thousands of Holocaust survivors) in 1977-78. Though the Nazis ultimately changed the venue of their\u200d march owing\u2063 to public pressure, it is remarkable that judges and ostensible partisans of civil liberty could make no principled distinction between a\u2062 political rally aimed to\u200d persuade and a march of crazed\u2062 haters intended solely to rub the most horrifying memories further into the faces of a long-persecuted group.<\/p>\n<p>Arkes rightly observes \u2062and laments &#8220;an erosion in the moral understanding that needs to govern the regulation of \u2062speech,&#8221; thereby undermining \u200bpublic support for the free speech \u200ditself (witness today&#8217;s &#8220;cancel culture&#8221; for \u2062an extreme consequence). To the \u2064response\u2063 that if government undertakes to ban Nazi\u200d demonstrations in Skokie, the next step will be\u2062 to prohibit\u2062 civil-rights \u2062or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/seattle-suburb-backs-down-from-ban-on-abortion-clinic-protesters\/\" title=\"Seattle Suburb Backs Down From Ban on Abortion Clinic Protesters\">pro-life demonstrations<\/a>, the only reasonable response is that the proper \u200capplication of\u200c constitutional \u200band legal rules requires an exercise of the Aristotelian virtue of prudence, coupled with \u200dthe\u2062 very\u200c sort\u2062 of originalist reading of the Constitution that\u2062 Arkes deplores.<\/p>\n<p>In criticizing the\u200d Court&#8217;s refusal to impose an \u2064outright ban on abortion based on the principles of natural law, Arkes laments Justice Brett Kavanaugh&#8217;s\u2062 remark in his <i>Dobbs<\/i> \u200dopinion (reversing <i>Roe<\/i> \u2063v. <i>Wade<\/i>) that &#8220;the Constitution is neutral&#8221; on the topic, being &#8220;neither pro-life nor \u200cpro-choice.&#8221; Arkes compares Kavanaugh&#8217;s\u2063 professed neutrality to the stance that Stephen Douglas adopted toward slavery during his \u200bdebates with \u200dLincoln, professing not to &#8220;care&#8221; whether \u2063the denizens of Kansas\u2063 and\u2064 Missouri voted slavery \u2062up or \u200bdown.\u2064 But while contrasting \u200dDouglas&#8217;s stance with\u2063 that of Lincoln, who\u2062 held that Constitution was designed by its authors to facilitate\u2062 the ultimate abolition of the &#8220;peculiar \u200cinstitution,&#8221; \u200cArkes \u2064also acknowledges Lincoln&#8217;s refusal to issue the \u2064Emancipation Proclamation except as \u200ba war measure, one that applied only in territories\u2062 in rebellion \u200dagainst the Union.<\/p>\n<p>While there can\u2064 be no\u2063 doubt of \u200dLincoln&#8217;s\u2063 hostility \u2062to the continuance of\u200d slavery, he also recognized the limits of his constitutional authority. Not only would an endeavor by him simply to proclaim\u200c an end to slavery\u200d throughout the \u200cUnion on his own authority \u2062have been politically imprudent; it would have been an\u200d infringement of the constitutional rights of his\u200c fellow citizens, who were entitled to be ruled by a government of their\u2062 choosing, subject to established legal procedures and limits\u2064 to any officeholder&#8217;s individual authority.\u2064 Abolishing slavery\u2064 permanently required a constitutional\u200b amendment.<\/p>\n<p>In wanting to assign\u200c the\u200d Supreme\u200d Court the authority to impose whatever content it \u2064finds inherent in the natural law, Arkes\u2064 fails to acknowledge such limits. Valuable as his\u2064 analysis of particular constitutional questions is, \u2063his prescriptions \u200cregarding \u200cthe Court&#8217;s duty would tend undermine its\u2063 public respect no less than the positivists have done.<\/p>\n<p><i>Mere Natural Law: Originalism and the Anchoring Truths \u2063of the\u200c Constitution<\/i><br \/>  by Hadley Arkes<br \/> Regnery Gateway, 352 pp., $32.99<\/p>\n<p><i>David Lewis Schaefer is professor emeritus of political science\u200c at the \u2064College of the Holy Cross.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hadley Arkes, former professor at Amherst, draws inspiration from C.S. Lewis&#8217;s Mere Christianity for his new book. Like Lewis, Arkes seeks to simplify his beliefs into principles that even children can understand. With a focus on natural law and constitutional interpretation, Arkes aims to express his approach concisely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":1986041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1986040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1986040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1986041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1986040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1986040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1986040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}