Saturday, June 15, 2013
This post, at Byzantium's Shores, gets it exactly right. Another way to think about it might be that legal systems resemble mathematical systems, at least to the extent that both can be said to be subject to Godel's incompleteness theorem. Arguments about social policy that rely exclusively on the text of the Constitution are a form of question-begging, and should not be tolerated except to the extent that they are arguments that are made within the context of the system itself. I could, for example, argue to a judge that people should not be allowed to protest political decisions made by the President because such protests create the risk of social disruption. Maybe they do, but the judge would reject that argument because its reasoning occurs outside of the legal context in which the courts operate. Even if the judge agreed with me, it would be error to hold in my favor, because the judge is bound to operate exclusively within the boundaries that the law-- in this example, the Constitution-- defines.
// posted by Bill @ 8:01 AM 
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