Never in the history of the United States of America has there been such character assassination during the selection process of a nominee to the Supreme Court...NEVER! And this is exactly what is going on by the Democrat Party who has rabidly attacked, accused, and found guilty of nothing, their slaughter of Bret Kavanaugh; most likely the highest qualified Constitutionalist judge in the last hundred years...or longer! Why is that?
We can probably sum up all of the reasons by quoting the first modern day progressive of the twentieth century, President Woodrow Wilson.
"We must control the courts and they shall control the future society. In effect, they must rewrite the Constitution." ~ President Woodrow Wilson
Source: The New American
Tuesday, 01 June 2010
Harvard Law Dean Kagan Replaced Constitution Studies
With International Law Written by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D
A central plank in Kagan’s revolutionary platform
is the abandonment of the requirement that students at Harvard Law School study
constitutional law. The course’s place in the curriculum was replaced by
classes examining the laws of other nations and international law.
In fact, according to the requirements for receiving a J.D. as listed on
the Harvard Law School website,
the study of our republic’s founding document is nowhere to be found.
In 2006, after the changes were proposed by Kagan and approved by the
faculty committee evaluating the suggestions, the school published a news
release to explain the changes and Kagan offered the following justification
for the de-emphasis of constitutional law studies:
From the beginning of law school, students should learn to locate what they are learning about public and private law in the United States within the context of a larger universe — global networks of economic regulation and private ordering, public systems created through multilateral relations among states, and different and widely varying legal cultures and systems. Accordingly, the Law School will develop three foundation courses, each of which represents a door into the global sphere that students will use as context for U.S. law.
The press release
identifies the three new required courses Kagan introduced to take precedence
over constitutional law. The first covers comparative international law and was
designed to “introduce students to the sources, institutions and procedures
emerging over time through the bilateral and multilateral arrangements among
states as well as the participation of nongovernmental actors.”
The second class, called “Legislation and Regulation” is designed to
familiarize students with he world of legislation, regulation, and
administration that creates and defines so much of our legal order.” In other
words, the regulations and codes promulgated by the bureaucracy are more
critical to the definition of our legal order than is the Constitution.
The final course, on comparative law, “will introduce students to one or
more legal systems outside our own, to the borrowing and transmission of legal
ideas across borders and to a variety of approaches to substantive and
procedural law that are rooted in distinct cultures and traditions,” the
release said. Again, Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama’s nominee to sit on
the Supreme Court, believes a survey of “legal systems outside our own” is more
valuable than a study of the Constitution.
Apart from the statements included in the press release, Elena Kagan
explained her justification for the curriculum changes she instituted at
Harvard in a 2008 article
published in The Green Bag, a legal journal dedicated to publishing
brief, readable articles about the law. In the piece, Kagan explained that the
effect of global crises and the call for global governance made it necessary to
minimize the role of constitutional studies in favor of classes more apropos to
the equipping of lawyers with “tools for all the roles they will be called on
to play."
One of the very important roles that these future leaders will play,
according to the article, is the quest to find workable solutions to problems
“ranging from climate change to terrorism to economic insecurity."
Neither the press release nor The Green Bag article indicates why
Kagan believed that these classes could not be added to the curriculum without
relegating the study of the Constitution to elective status.
While the benefits of the courses of study created by Elena Kagan are
debatable, it is difficult to find a single sound argument for downgrading the
study of constitutional law to elective status. That is not to say that a class
improving students’ international perspective is unnecessary. As a matter of
fact, many of our own Founding Fathers made the study of international law one
of the key aspects of their own education in anticipation of the Constitutional
Convention of 1787.
The unanswered question is: Why could Elena Kagan not find room for
these new classes without pushing the study of constitutional law to the
margins of the Harvard course catalog? Why was it an either/or situation, and
why did she come down on the side of international and regulatory law and
against the Constitution?
It would be similar to the English Department at Harvard determining
that Shakespeare would no longer be required reading for students interested in
a PhD in Elizabethan English literature.
Robert Alt, senior legal fellow and deputy director of the Center for
Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, reckons that the changes
made by Kagan at Harvard offer a glimmer of insight into Kagan’s perception of
the Constitution and its place in American jurisprudence. Even a scintilla of
evidence is valuable given the dearth of reliable indications of Kagan’s
constitutional mien.
“One of the things [that] we don’t know about Kagan, which she has not
been terribly forthcoming on in previous questioning (during her nomination)
for solicitor general, is how she views international law,” Alt said. “Should
domestic law be influenced or modified by international law? We don’t know what
she thinks.”
Article 2, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution grants the president power
to nominate and appoint, with the advice and consent of the Senate, judges of
the Supreme Court. It is the responsibility of the Senate to enquire into Elena
Kagan’s constitutional bent and her propensity for interpreting our
foundational document in a manner consistent with established principles of
federalism, separation of powers, and limited government.
As Mr. Alt, understandably concerned with the message sent by Kagan’s
near obliteration of constitutional law from the basic curriculum of Harvard
Law School, observed, “This is an important question because there are others
in the Obama administration, like Harold Koh, for instance, who have suggested
with regard to the First Amendment, for instance, that perhaps the First
Amendment should be modified in some way in accordance with international
norms, in order to facilitate compliance with international agreements.” Harold
Koh is the Legal Adviser to the Department of State and is controversial for
his advocacy of using tenets of international law and foreign legal precedent
to inform the deliberative process of judicial decision making in the United
States.
The First Amendment that Koh would "modify" to conform to
international standards of liberty reads: “Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of
the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress
of grievances.”
This article was modified to reflect the fact that constitutional
studies were not wholly abandoned, but were purposefully de-emphasized and
reduced to little more than elective status in the curriculum of the Harvard
Law School while Elena Kagan was dean.
