Who Defends Individual Rights?
David Bernstein notes that the conservative judges of the Supreme Court are much more likely to defend individual rights than liberals.
The Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, upholding the Second Amendment right of individuals to own firearms, should finally lay to rest the widespread myth that the defining difference between liberal and conservative justices is that the former support “individual rights” and “civil liberties,” while the latter routinely defer to government assertions of authority. The Heller dissent presents the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides.
Liberals: expanding state power to achieve ‘equality’ since the 1960’s.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Exactly which rights beside gun ownership and polluting do conservatives protect? Liberals protect rights to abortion, privacy, public trial, marriage, etc. yes obviously both sides are more aligned with political groups than ideals and do whatever t takes to support their side, but I certainly don’t see conservatives having a better record overall in this area.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Did you read the post?
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
I would have to agree with darwin that a lot of individual rights get supported more by liberals than by conservatives. But darwin doesn’t seem to be counting economic rights as rights in the same way that privacy is a right. Conservatives pretty consistently fight against zoning laws that impinge on people’s rights to their own property, while liberals fight against the expansion of military powers into a previously civilian realm. Do you disagree steve?
July 10th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
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