Strict Construction

Dahlia Lithwick has an article in the NY Times op-ed on Strict Constructionism. I highly recommend it. A juicy quote:

A modest proposal, then: Let's invent a new term right here, today, for judges or judicial nominees on the right, who claim to be merely "interpreting" the Constitution, even when they are refusing to impose settled law; law they deem unsettled because it was invented by "liberal activist judges."

Anyhow, it all puts me in a mind of Gibbons v. Ogden, the landmark 1824 decision by the Marshall Court:

What do gentlemen mean by a strict construction? If they contend only against that enlarged construction which would extend words beyond their natural and obvious import, we might question the application of the term, but should not controvert the principle. If they contend for that narrow construction which, in support of some theory not to be found in the Constitution, would deny to the government those powers which the words of the grant, as usually understood, import, and which are consistent with the general views and objects of the instrument; for that narrow construction, which would cripple the government, and render it unequal to the objects for which it is declared to be instituted, and to which the powers given, as fairly understood, render it competent; then we cannot perceive the propriety of this strict construction, nor adopt it as the rule by which the Constitution is to be expounded. As men whose intentions require no concealment generally employ the words which most directly and aptly express the ideas they in tend to convey, the enlightened patriots who framed our Constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they have said. If, from the imperfection of human language, there should be serious doubts respecting the extent of any given power, it is a well-settled rule that the objects for which it was given, especially when those objects are expressed in the instrument itself, should have great influence in the construction.

One of the most interesting things about "strict constructionism," to me, is that it has a 200 year history of rejection.

Kind of like Senator Fodaker's apparently naive assertion, in 1905, that:

[Civil War veterans] accomplished more still; as already indicated, they not only prevented all the disasters suggested, and achieved for us the blessings of an indissoluble Union and universal freedom, but they freed us from the paralysis of the doctrines of States rights and strict construction, by which the power of the Federal Government was minimized to the point of helplessness to even save our national life, and gave it in turn that vitality, vigor and scope which belong to full national sovereignty.

I don't mind that the Conservatives think they've got a historical tradition. What I really resent is the ignorance of most Americans that their historical tradition is one that has historically been acknowledged and emphatically rejected by our people and our government.