Word: blasi
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...that religiously inspired symbols should be permitted when they reflect U.S. tradition. "As long as we're going to have Christmas as a national holiday," says Fordham University law professor Charles Whelan, "it makes sense to allow the display of a creche." But as Columbia University law professor Vincent Blasi points out, there is a catch. "In order to uphold the use of religious symbols," he says, "you have to officially describe them as having a secular meaning." Such a redefinition, says James Andrews, chief executive of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), "amounts to the trivialization of the Christian faith...
...government, not an open statute book. Bulk can even be an inverse indication of its power: the 181 articles in the constitution of the Weimar Republic were the Maginot Line of German democracy. "It's dangerous to amend the Constitution too much," says Columbia University Law Professor Vincent Blasi. "It won't have the look of fundamental...
Constitutional scholars like Harvard's Laurence Tribe and Columbia's Vincent Blasi see a cloaked radicalism in such doctrine. While claiming legitimacy from the founders, they argue, a decision like Dred Scott flouts decades of evolving law and practice--in this case the Missouri Compromise, along with other statutes through which Congress sought to regulate slavery in the territories. The real orthodoxy and stability in law, says Blasi, is to adhere to the expanding thrust of precedent, and to respect and integrate the judgments of successive generations, rather than ascribe mythical intentions to the Founding Fathers. As Justice Oliver Wendell...
...handed down by past judges. Rehnquist has been less respectful of Supreme Court precedent, especially the decisions of the liberal Warren Court. His critics sometimes accuse him of disingenuously twisting history to fit his own views. "Don't forget, Rehnquist is a radical," says Columbia Law School Professor Vincent Blasi. "Nobody since the 1930s has been so niggardly in interpreting the Bill of Rights, so blatant in simply ignoring years and years of precedent." Rehnquist retorts that such attacks come from liberal academics and that "on occasion, they write somewhat disingenuously about...
...perch on the far right edge of the court. "By and large he is consistent," says Law Professor Herman Schwartz of American University. "That's why I don't think he should be chief. I wonder about the choice of a man consistently on the fringes." But Columbia's Blasi contends, "Rehnquist is an excellent court infighter--certainly better than Burger and maybe even better than Earl Warren. He's an intensely political person. Some people see him sitting out there in his own world with his principles, but I think he really likes...