all-encompassingly

Last week will be remembered as one of the most momentous in American jurisprudential history. In handing down their decision regarding Texas’ anti-sodomy law, the Supreme Court continued their unabashed love for rewriting the constitution. First it was “penumbras” and “emanations” of privacy in the constitution, and now we have Justice Kennedy describing one man getting it on with another man as “liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.” That’s funny, gay library patrons who used to search for homosexual images on Google (before the filters!) probably used more explicit language to describe this “spatial and transcendant liberty.”

Nonetheless, the case was historic on two fronts. It destroyed the established precedent spelled out in the Bowers decision, which basically said that individual states can outlaw behavior that they believe is wrong. The recent decision also continued a disturbing trend of the Court to ignore the constitution so that it could take sides in the culture wars. Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion is brilliant, and is available here for all to read. To get to Scalia’s dissent in the document (which contains more than just his dissent) scroll down a little more than half-way through the entire document. His dissent begins right after O’Connor’s concurring opinion. The last four pages (starting on page 48 of the PDF), as well as Thomas’ dissent are excellent.