OT: "strict construction" redux [was "Clearly OT:" etc etc]

To G/P Dave and others who were following this excrescence of the O.J.
Simpson thread:

I recently stumbled upon an article by Cass Sunstein, from earlier this
year when the Michigan affirmative action case was current, which
reflects our discussion of "strict construction" and misuse of the
term.

Not surprisingly, Professor Sunstein is far more articulate than I was.

The link: http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/3/sunstein-c.html

And a few excerpts:
 
> But the goal has increasingly been to promote "movement
> judges" -- judges with no interest in judicial restraint and with real
> eagerness to strike down the acts of Congress and state governments. On
> the central issues of the day, many conservative judges seem to think
> that the Constitution should be interpreted to overlap with the latest
> Republican Party platform. (Sometimes they call this "strict
> construction.") 

> [...]

> The result of this one-sided political battle is that America now has
> an ideologically reconstructed federal judiciary that has taken a
> strong stand, in many cases, against both Congress and the states. The
> Rehnquist Court has struck down at least 26 federal enactments since
> 1995 -- a record of activism against the national legislative branch.
> In terms of sheer numbers of invalidations of acts of Congress, the
> Rehnquist Court might well qualify as the all-time champion.

For what it's worth, I agree with Sunstein a lot -- more than with any
other prominent constitutional scholar I can think of.  In particular I
share his two views -- sometimes considered contradictory -- (1) that
the current conservative court is as politically activist as the
liberal Warren court ever was, and (2) that Roe v Wade was decided far
too broadly and as a result was counter-productive for the cause of
women's rights.

mdl