From: luis terrassa <luiste@prw.net>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:19:40 -0400

Re: constitutional interpretation, protection from private actors, and taxi drivers in vegas

The question is whether in the future we will come to regret having so 
long ago limited the reach of the Bill of Rights to "state action", and 
whether there will ever be anything we can do about it. For all that 
conservatives like originalism and the strict reading of statutes, this 
is one major instance where judicial lawmaking deprived us of half of 
our Constitution, if not more...  Looking back, we were lucky to come 
out with the incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the States, again 
by judicial sleight-of-hand, after it had almost been confined to the 
Federal government by the Court.

Maybe it will take an originalist or two in the Court to recover the 
protections of the Bill of Rights in the face of increasing intrusions 
into our private spheres by corporations armed with new technologies 
and voyeuristic cab drivers in Vegas.

An interesting constitutional amendment for the XXIst century could be 
the extension of the Bill of Rights to private action, but to expect 
this from Congress is like asking the wolf to guard the henhouse. It 
seems sad that the wisdom and vision of the drafters of these rights 
was cut short so long ago by racist judges, and that protections that 
would come in so handy in our day and age were traded off so long ago 
for closed-minded racism. At least at one point in our history, the 
lawmakers were more enlightened than the judges...



-----------------------------------------------------------------
Computers, Privacy, and the Constitution mailing list