Word: strictly
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...that "Souter won't graft current ideas or social concerns onto constitutional law." In a dissent he wrote in 1986, Souter said "the court's interpretive task is to determine the meaning of . . . ((constitutional language)) as it was understood when the framers proposed it." A judge cannot be more strict constructionist than that. On the other hand, Roe v. Wade does constitute precedent, another principle the conservative Souter holds dear. Says Fink: "He really reveres the law. He's not someone who's coming from his personal opinions and then twists the law accordingly...
...earlier case, argued in 1972 when Souter was the state's deputy attorney general, New Hampshire defended its strict anti-abortion law against a constitutional challenge by arguing: "The maintenance of an unborn child's right to birth is a compelling interest which outweighs any rights of a mother to an abortion except when necessary to preserve her life...
...written or helped shape. His departure, which may be followed soon by those of the court's two remaining aging liberals, could set the stage for a total transformation of the high court. It could become a body more skeptical of -- if not hostile to -- abortion rights, affirmative action, strict separation between church and state and protection of free speech...
...period of strict economic austerity, gangs of kidnapers are bidding to become Brazil's richest citizens. More than two dozen people, mostly businessmen, have been abducted and held for ransom in Rio de Janeiro so far this year. Last week brought the third in six days...
...Strict reporting requirements are a vestige of the way the legal system treats rape victims. It has taken years to reverse the assumption that women fabricate claims of rape and incest or that they somehow bring the crime on themselves. Until recent reforms, a victim's testimony alone was not enough to convict a rapist, although it was enough to convict any other kind of criminal. Even now, a rape victim who goes to court often finds herself on trial as much as her attacker is. As a result, rape is one of the most underreported crimes in America...