RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Ruth Bader Ginsberg to Egypt: I Wouldn't Use U.S. Constitution as a Model

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/...ution-as-model/

• As Egyptian officials prepare to send to trial 19 American democracy and rights workers, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg visited Cairo last week where she suggested Egyptian revolutionaries not use the U.S. Constitution as a model in the post-Arab Spring.
  
  "I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012," Ginsburg said in an interview on Al Hayat television last Wednesday. "I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, have an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done."
  
  As Egypt prepares to write a new constitution, Ginsburg, who was traveling during the court's break to speak with legislators and judges in Egypt as well as Tunisia, spoke to students at Cairo University, encouraging them to enjoy the opportunity to participate in the "exceptional transitional period to a real democratic state."
  
  
  In a long interview with a reporter who asked her to explain the foundation of the U.S. Constitution and how it would be applied in today's Egypt, Ginsburg suggested with pride that "we have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, 'We, the people.'"
  
  Ginsburg also extolled several aspects of the document, particularly the separation of powers, the concept of checks and balances and an independent judiciary that can't have its salaries diminished if it rules a law enacted by Congress as unconstitutional.
  
  But asked about models for the Egyptian people, Ginsburg said Egyptians "should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone on since the end of World War II."
  
  She then pointed not only to South Africa's constitution, but to Canada's 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the European Convention on Human Rights.
  
  "Why not take advantage of what is else there in the world? I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others," Ginsburg added.
  
  Indeed, Ginsburg's comments are not foreign to her overall philosophy. The justice has previously stated that she weighs foreign law as well as U.S. law when forming a legal opinion.
  
  "The notion that it is improper to look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification," Ginsburg told an audience at the American Society of International Law in April 2005.
  
  Ginsburg told the Egyptian interviewer that she can't dispense advice for Egyptian society about how to set up its constitution, nor can she comment on a document that isn't written or in force yet.
  
  But she said looking at the Federalist Papers -- essays written by the drafters to expound upon the articles before they were ratified by the states -- it's clear that a discussion must be held by all members of the country. She also suggested that a constitution is only as good as the people who live by it.
  
  "If the people don't care, the best constitution in the world won't make any difference," she warned.

Not the slightest bit of irony here. That her job as an appointed member of our highest court is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution that she feels is inferior to the governing constitutions of a collapsing socialist Europe, a post-european South Africa that has basically wiped out any political power of its white minority (many of whom I've met, who immigrate to the U.S. as cheap labor, manifesting their own preference for the "obsolete" U.S. constitution and system over theirs), a europe-like Canada, and so forth.


Once again proving that liberals at the highest level of our government don't love our country, and believe in our country. They only believe in what they can radically transform it into.

She's absolutely correct. Only the simplest of morons who have no actual connection to the real world would think a two-hundred-year-old-plus=document biased-towards-slavery-and-pro-white-dominance would be in any way, shape, or form applicable to ANY modern government of the 21st century.

I wonder if David, the Wonder Traitor actually grasps we don't use the Constitution for anything other than a Tea Party pep-rally these days? There's so many amendments and technicalities attached to it as to make its original intent completely irrelevant.

But, I'm sure in Dave's mind it's "SOROS IS ATTACKING THE GOD-LOVIN' CONSTITUTION-FEARIN' 'MERICA!!"

This thread went full retard quickly.

Much ado about nothing. The writer wanted to make the crazed parts of the base PMS about something. And, looking at Dave's response, was successful. No one else gives a fuck about it. Let's move on.

Very true. But, the point is pretty valid, don't you think? Why would someone go get the Magna Carter to create a new nation?

Oh, I agree with Ginsberg on this. I think she takes pride in our Constitution, but realizes ours isn't necessarily the template from which all constitutions should be written. There has been 200+ years of improving the strain. Why not look at them first?

She also makes the important point that a constitution is only as good as its people. Which may explain why ours just looks like a dusty, old relic at this point.

A woman who favors South Africa's constitution over the U.S. constitution, whose job it is to uphold the U.S. Constitution, does not belong on the U.S. Supreme Court.

No, you moron, she's right. You're just a dinosaur stuck saluting a dead flag...

i love the way you call others "traitor" and over and over prove yourself to be the true traitor.

Patriotic Americans don't regard it as a "dead flag". You should leave, and make room for the millions who would be far more patriotic Americans than you.

And one of those Supreme elephants in your political cartoon, John Roberts, is a swing elephant.

The liberal justices like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sotomayor and Kagan have a record of ruling in favor of their personal politics rather than for what is consistent with the Constitutional standard of law. We KNOW how these justices will vote.

The conservatives you vilify actually weigh the constitutionality of what they review, and respect the rule of law.

Vicious fucks like you would gladly tear down that rule of law with mob violence, in an Occupy Wall Street type revolution. If they could stop smoking dope long enough to actually have the revolution they dream about.

A rose by any other name is still a marxist with a leftist agenda.

she certainly manifests herself not to be a strong defender of the Constitution. Which as a Supreme Court justice, is her job.

In an ideal United States, with an ideal president who values, "preserves, protects and defends" our Constitution, that blatant lack of allegience for the document she was appointed to defend would be legal grounds to pursue removing her from office.

I still can't get over that someone who believes what Ginsberg does is allowed to remain on the court.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG WILL BE FIRST JUSTICE TO OFFICIATE SAME-SEX WEDDING (Washington Post)

Again demonstrating that she is not interested in upholding and preserving the Constitution in her rulings, but (like Sotomayor and Kagan) is ideologically driven to rule in favor of her Social Marxist/progressive ulterior agenda.




Rather telling, that. She waited until immediately after her U S S C gay marriage ruling to announce her participation in a gay marriage commencement that MAKES CLEAR her bias.



Again, very telling.

Also telling that virtually all the people mentioned are highly titled, highly appointed Washington elites.
And, of course, with friends inside the Washington Post, who gushed in this piece about Ginsberg's officiating a gay wedding, with more gay officiatings to come.

I have to defend Ginsberg on this one. Obviously any judge has an opinion. However had she agreed to officiate her and/or had she officiated at the wedding prior to the Supreme Court decision being handed down she would have been acting in her official capacity in a manner that directly related to something before her. That is an ethical no-no.

Does it really make a difference if she officiated back then, or a month later as she's doing now?

I mean, either way, her ideological enthusiasm for gay marriage is clear, and thus her bias against the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) that she ruled against.
Especially when she received the request to officiate a gay marriage and avoided leaving a trail to her doing a gay wedding, and then enthusiastically agreed to officiate THE VERY NEXT DAY after the DOMA Court ruling?

How much more clear could her bias be, and her conscious attempt to hide that bias until after the U S S C DOMA ruling?

It's only ok for conservatives to have biases apparently.

Actually, you are both wrong. Having an opinion isn't a bias.

It's only ok for conservatives to have opinions apparently.


I think you can actually have both btw.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg leaped in a single bound over an ethical line again:




In bashing Donald Trump, some say Ruth Bader Ginsburg just crossed a very important line

• It's a political cliche at this point to joke about moving to another country if a certain presidential candidate doesn't win. Gobs of Americans were headed to Canada if George W. Bush was reelected in 2004. A similar contingent threatened to flood across our northern border when Barack Obama was elected and reelected.
  
  Generally, though, you don't hear a Supreme Court justice talking like this. In fact, you generally don't hear a Supreme Court justice talking at all — much less about the big political issues of the day.
  
  Most justices aren't Ruth Bader Ginsburg, though. And in a new New York Times interview, Ginsburg doesn't hold a thing back when it comes to the 2016 election.
  
  “I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” Ginsburg told the Times' Adam Liptak. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”
  
  
  Ginsburg also recalled something her late husband said about such matters: "Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand."
  
  This appears to be a joke, but Ginsburg's sentiment here is crystal clear: She thinks Donald Trump would be a dangerous president. And in saying it, she goes to a place justices almost never do — and perhaps never have — for some very good reasons.
  
  Ginsburg is known for pushing the bounds of a justice's public comments and has earned something of a cult following on the left. But some say she just went too far.
  
  "I find it baffling actually that she says these things," said Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. "She must know that she shouldn’t be. However tempted she might be, she shouldn’t be doing it."
  
  Similarly, Howard Wolfson, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, said Ginsburg shouldn't have said it.

Kind of makes you wonder whether she can fairly judge any politically conservative case before the U.S. Supreme Court. And whether she belongs on the court at all.