A 'Stepford Wife' she is not...

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Sad that I'd even need to say that but - politics is what it is.

Very interesting lecture on the court's recent history, near future (4 to 8 year span), and discussion on Justice Antonin Scalia that Prof Amy Barrett delivered in 2016. I'm not a lawyer but I can see the benefits to both approaches she mentioned early on, between Scalia and Breyer, I think the predominant trick in trying to mediate between historical frameworks and present issues would be to really dial in on what are perennial problems, be a strict constructionist where the founding document sized those problems up accurately, and only nudge toward accuracy where some significant new insight into the human condition has uncovered a 'bug' in the original code.

This also reminds me of something I encountered when deciding which local judges I'd vote for in 2020 - if the (R) or (D) by their name has any real impact on how they rule on cases they're a crappy judge, which is something she described early in the lecture where the term 'conservatism' in law doesn't mean political conservatism but rather textual conservatism.

The problem is it was not true. Scalia reinterpreted the 2nd Amendment in Heller from the textual meaning in the Constitution of a collective right to a unique interpretation of an individual right. Our 2nd Amendment rights up to that point were always given as collective.

For anyone not familiar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_ ... _v._Heller