We've often mentioned "legal positivism" as a danger to the country (and mankind,
as it turns out here).
Lecturer Obozo, while at U of Chicago, shows us how this is so; he ignores the Declaration to lead his students to a Statist conclusion.
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Once again, constitutional law exams work in a very specific way: the teacher presents an “issue-spotting” question, in which students are asked to provide analysis of a set of facts; the teacher then provides sample answers, so students know if they covered the issues....
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Obama suggests that there is a fundamental constitutional right to clone oneself. The precedent cases “all argue for a broad reading of the right at stake: a right to make decisions regarding childbearing free from government interference—at least absent a government showing that such interference is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.”
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Obama next examines the state’s interests in preventing cloning. He rejects nearly all of them, but focuses in particular on the state’s interest in “preserving the sanctity of life/family bonds.” The state, says Obama, probably doesn’t have a “compelling interest in preventing what it considers to be the ‘devaluation’ of human life that might result from cloning.” As to the family, Obama states, the state has no ability to restrict “an individual’s fundamental right to bear children or form a family solely on the basis of the state’s abstract judgment of what a family should look like.” The case law may support the first proposition in this sentence – that who bears children is not up to the state. But the second proposition – that forming a family is also not up to the state – is an early argument for gay marriage,...
In the real world, the State has a grave and compelling interest in 'preventing the devaluation of human life...'. The consequences of such devaluation are ......ahhh.......Statism. Surprised? In contrast, the Declaration of Independence implicitly and explicitly calls for the State to
protect "life, liberty, and the pursuit...." Notice the word-order here: 'life' is the first-mentioned for a reason; it is the most important of the three.
...Obama believes that the right to privacy should encompass everything up to and including cloning...
That assumes that
Griswold's "right to privacy" is actually a Constitutional finding. It is not so (
pace Charlie Sykes and other libertarian-oriented folks).