Back during the 1972 campaign, satirist Mort Sahl, long thought to be a man of the Left but actually quite independent-minded, said something like this: “In less than 200 years we’ve gone from Madison, Adams, Franklin and Washington to Nixon and McGovern. What can we conclude from this? Darwin was wrong!”
The reference, of course, is to Charles Darwin’s thesis that man evolved into a higher species. Nevertheless, roughly the same could be said of the grand old document that quartet crafted: The United States Constitution.
At a Constitution Day conference at the Cato Institute on September 15, 2016, Elizabeth Price Foley, a law professor at Florida International University, pointed out that there were three levels of Constitutional scrutiny: strict, intermediate, and rational basis.
Arguably, the U. S. Supreme Court and all of those in its orbit—lawyers and law professors alike—are opting for none of the above. Indeed, Professor Foley pretty much does argue it, particularly in the four decades of SCOTUS decisions in abortion cases.
Professor Foley made note of the “creative contortions in them” even while indicating that she herself is pro-choice. Professor Foley is the author of Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality, and numerous articles and columns.
Photo by kjd