Manuel, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ statement on habeus corpus is the result of more than 30 years of Republican/Conservative constitutional thinking — that rights don’t exist unless they are explicitly laid out in the Constitution. I cannot recall how many times I’ve heard some conservative say “there is no right of privacy in the U.S. Constitution.” Sometimes I have heard this said in the same breath used to decry liberal activist judges who fail to appreciate the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution.
The AG, in fact, made just this argument to Sen. Specter:
GONZALES: I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say, “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by —
SPECTER: You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.
Gonzales is making an interesting argument. Essentially, what is he is doing is saying that because there is no inherent “right” to habeus corpus, the government cannot actually take it away. And is violating no individual human being’s rights by holding them without charge. If you approached the entire Constitution this way, then none of us have any rights as human beings unless explicitly given to us by the state.
Conservatism long-ago embraced the legal notions of Progressivism and Socialism, the notion that individual liberties are “given” — created — by government, and not inherent to the individual (or endowed by our creator, as the case may be). I hope state-loving, presidency-worshiping Conservatives are happy when Hillary Clinton inherits all this power should she get herself elected president.
5:21 pm on January 20, 2007
