re: #44 sizzleRI

This is most likely a dead thread by now, but I have to respond to this. The Supreme Court is not a second legislature but it is the sole interpreter of the the Constitution. If you don’t like that take it up with Article VI, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, Marbury v. Madison and over 200 years of SCOTUS precedent.

You’re right as a matter of fact. If the SC decides to stand the law and the Constitution on its head and rule that up is down, then as a matter of case law, from then on, up is down.

All I’m saying is that the SC ought not do so. It ought to stick to what the text of the law and the constitution mean, as read by anyone with good reading comprehension and some background knowledge. Part of that background knowledge would be knowing what contemporaries wrote about what the law or the constitutional provision meant, especially if such explanations went undisputed at the time.

So yes, if the SC so chooses, it can rule that it’s unconstitutional to deny minors aged 13-17 the right to vote, and it can extend the franchise to them. But they ought not do it. If reason and justice, or the passions of the time, require that these teens get the right to vote, then Congress ought to pass a law and bestow upon them that right. The notion that everything a majority wants becomes, by virtue of that wish, implicit in the Constitution and becomes retroactively there all along, is wrong headed and will get us into trouble if we make it a habit to do things that way.