Interpreting the Law

You know the thing that impressed me most that I have ever written about judges, interpreting texts, was a statement by learned handlers. Maybe the greatest judge ever had in the United States. He is certainly one of the few. And he said interpreting a text is like a tough, difficult decision; he said it is closer to a performer interpreting a musical score. You want to be true to that score. You want to be true to the intent of the composer who wrote the music.

And there is not a magic formula. There is no magic formula that will tell you how to do it. And I would be amazed if I could give you a formula about how to use consequences in every case. So, I think if you put it more rightly, the proof of the putting is in the eating. I write down what I think. And if people read it, they will see what the reason is. And they can criticize it and I might learn from that.

But there is not a magic onset. You know, I am proud of it since I recently wrote it in the sand and in the case involving the use of race conscious criteria in schools that is whether the City in Seattle could use as one criteria among the several. They allow high school students to have freedom to choose whatever school they wanted. They listed preferences but they said that no school would be more than 85% white. Basically, that was there criterion and the question was, “Could they actually overtly in that way use a racial criterion?” And the court five to four decided that they could not.

I descend it. I thought of course, there where consequences relevant there. They are certainly were to me as I said if you interpret the equal protection course, into forbid this, how our people suppose to deal with problems of racing poverty in the cities of America. And I see the constitution as a very workable document. I think Madison’s genius was to say, “We are going to get these values and we stay the same and we are going to embody them in words that allow their application over the course over the next four, 500 years, and if not longer.

And to do that, you have to refer back to how do these values applied today, what is the value of the equal protection course? Trying to bring us together, trying to create one nation, trying to create races that were separate indeed one held in slaver like a cast system and try to create one country out of this diversity and it is a miracle. But we have been able to do that to a degree. There are still plenty of problems and for me to think of that clause being posed as an obstacle to such an effort. Well I just think of that was wrong and I express my views very concisely in about 77 days.


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