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11/13/2004: "Survey of "strict constructionism""
Today's Times has this article detailing the evolution of the term "Strict Constructionism" as well as placing it in some sort of historical context.
"Originalism" is the other term used.
'course you get into all sorts of weirdness with this stuff, because most conservatives do not want activist judges, yet it requires an activist judge to knock down the foundations of the regulatory state, to deny 60 years of precendents.
If you're a business owner, you have to be cheering for the Bushies, who must see the last thirty years of the 19th century as their lofty goal. Screw the environment, worker rights, racial justice-- any of the products of 20th century movements, from Progressivism to the CRM-- let's return to a land of robber barons and po' folks.
Makes me think of Garry Wills article on Bill Clinton a few weeks ago in the NY Review of Books...there he presented the very real failures of the Clinton presidency to put a dent in the swelling conservative worldview.