On principled decisions (not sure where I heard this and if it is merely apocryphal): a while back Rehnquist was aksed why he did not write more principled opinion (not quantity), to which he replied, "If I had the vites, I would." So there is something to said for the fact that you have a multi-principled legal system in the legislature and the judiciary such that there really can be no uniform rule of law.
dave dorkin <ddorkin1 at yahoo.com> wrote: They arent bad examples for me-they might seem like it to you perhaps given your anglo-american legal/political background-and in fact they were not protected as you say simply in all the cases to which I refered. The point was that liberal society can make these decisions-it just so happens that they may simply reflect a certain group's particular conception over others and that is not "principled" in any sense which can be defended other than we have no other option than to privilege one conception over another.
They were resolved in at least 3 very different ways in each of the 3 areas owing to considerations of what it would be "reasonable" to do and by taking considerations entirely unrelated to any principle that could be grounded and applied consistantly. So if by rule of law you mean anything other than pragmatic concerns bounded by a constitutional text, pleaed do tell. For my part, I see some value in it like EP Thompson, but let's not exagerate...
--- Justin Schwartz wrote:
> Those are bad examples. Head scarves are obviously
> protected unless there is
> a safety reason to prohibit them. I am aware that
> particular cases pose hard
> questions. That's been my business for years.
>
> Nonetheless, there is no alternative toliberalism
> but illiberalism and
> coercion, and that's not an acceptable alternative.
> That's why it's an easy
> question.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com
--------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Sign-up for Video Highlights of 2002 FIFA World Cup -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20020620/2f6dde6e/attachment.htm>