Doug Kmiec Talks About Qualifications for the Supreme Court in A Catholic Magazine

Oh dear here we go again.

Doug Kmiec and his allies often try to frame the opposition to him as just simple politcs. He is a conservative Catholic voice and supported Obama. Thus is now being unfairly persecuted

This is of course nonsense. What gets many of us is that after it appears his bud Mitt did not get the nomination he appears to have had a radical transformation in views from to A to Z that seem to align quite a bit with Obama's views. There is no hint either in statements or from the legal academy of hardly even a gradual shift pre 2008 cycle of his view. But come Romney getting out of the race the change was dramatic. For many of us we find this hard to swallow.

He has written a article for American magazine where he talks about the qualifications of a Supreme Court Justice. American Catholic Blog has done a good job of showing the massive holes in this. See their very good post here which appears to be part I.

Let me say I find something glaring in this article. Where is the talk of the Natural Law. Kmiec in his advocacy for Obama articles would often have a paragraph or two on how he is a big believer in the natural law and thinks that jurist should have the same. That is for instance that the right to life would be protected by the natural law principles found in the Declaration of Independence. Now he never got explaining how Obama would ever appoint such a creature. There is more a chance of me being elected Pope.

Souter is a huge positive law person that in the tradition of Holmes (who he did a Graduate papers on) thinks that cases should be decided without looking a other underlying moral principles. But in all of Kmiec praise for Souter he does not even mentioned this.

One other item on his view of empathy and I think Kmiec realizes this. These cases the Supreme Court do not operate in a vacuum.

For instance years ago there was significant Interstate Commerce clause where the Congress claimed it could legislated Free Gun Zones at schools. Now many people thought that was a true warping of the Interstate Commerce Power that has already been warped quite a big.

Now what is wrong wit the Supreme Court!! Way were they not "empathic" toward gun violence in schools. The problem is if they had allowed this there were yet another precedent that allows Congress to do anything under the sun from A to Z under the Interstate Commerce Clause. You cannot restrict the affects and ruling of these cases to a particular set of Plaintiffs/Defendants and a particular fact scenario.

Kmiec knows this.

Part II of the above post will address what Kmiec has to say on abortion which I am very much attempted to go ahead and do since there is something misleading in that part. However I will wait for the above poster to give his contribution