Collegiate Times

President Bush?s nomination of Harriet Miers for Supreme Court justice has to be some kind of cruel joke. Not because she lacks experience ? plenty of people have become Supreme Court justices without prior judicial experience ? but because the nomination reeks of the worst kind of cronyism. Miers is one of Bush?s closest friends, as well as his former personal lawyer. That is a serious problem; a judge must be fully independent in order to make wise decisions. Meirs? close friendship with the president will corrupt her decisions, since correctly interpreting the Constitution often means going against the wishes of the president. The way that she fawns over Bush ? hilariously calling him the ?most brilliant man I ever met? leaves little doubt in my mind that when it comes to choosing between protecting the Constitution and pleasing the administration, she will choose the latter.

Bush should drop Miers immediately and find a rational, intelligent, distinguished and independent person who will correctly interpret the Constitution and defend individual rights. The defense of individual rights, after all, is the entire purpose behind the Constitution.

?To secure these rights (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness) governments are instituted among men.? ? The Declaration of Independence.

Those qualities should make the next Supreme Court justice well-equipped to confront the many constitutional crises facing this country.

One such crisis is the debate over the Patriot Act, which will have gone on for four years as of next week. That Act?s broad definition of terrorism ? acts intended ?to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion? ? could treat peaceful protestors who are critical of the government as the equivalents of Osama Bin Laden.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act enables federal agents to get warrants to sweep up vast amounts of records ? the majority of which almost certainly belong to innocent Americans not even aware that their privacy is being invaded. The worst part is that the federal agents don?t even have to provide evidence of suspected criminal activity in order to get these warrants.

The government?s assurances that it will not abuse the powers granted to it by the Patriot Act are not very reassuring. The Founding Fathers knew that government tended to abuse its powers if it is given the right to do so. Striking down the unconstitutional parts of the Patriot Act should therefore be a high priority for the next Supreme Court justice.

Besides the Patriot Act, there is another major threat to American freedom coming from our own government, and it is found in the case of Jose Padilla. Padilla, an American citizen, has been imprisoned for three years without charge. He is a convicted murderer and quite possibly a terrorist, so I am not exactly concerned with his well-being. But the fact that an American citizen can simply be declared a terrorist by Bush and locked up indefinitely should be absolutely terrifying. This is the same president that got us into the Iraq war, after all; his standards of evidence really aren?t too high. And if the Supreme Court fails to strike this action down as unconstitutional, we will be subject to this arbitrary and unlimited power until the war on terrorism ends ? which could be never.

There are other constitutionally protected freedoms that aren?t threatened anymore. They?re dead. One of those is ?freedom of contract? (see Lochner v. New York, 1905). This fundamental constitutional right protected Americans? freedom to make voluntary agreements with others without government interference. It comes from the Fifth Amendment: ?No person shall be ? deprived of life, liberty, or property; without due process of law.?

Now, one might be tempted to think that ?due process of law? simply relates to the trials and courts. Not so. There is such a thing as ?substantive due process? which protects certain fundamental rights from federal and state laws. Though incorrectly used to protect slavery in Dred Scott v. Sandford, this doctrine has been used to protect the freedoms of marriage, homosexuality and raising children.

Freedom of Contract is absolutely essential for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Consider the various socialist totalitarian states of the 20th century; they negated all freedom of contract by putting all economic activity under the thumb of the government. The results were famine, forced labor and stagnation ? the polar opposites of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And violating it in lesser degrees disrupts economic activity, often resulting in unemployment or reduced production.

The Supreme Court has failed to protect freedom of contract since about 1937. This is due to moral corruption ? justices have succumbed to the influence of various collectivist ethics that deny and restrict the individual rights this country was founded on. The next Supreme Court justice should be free of that corruption and restore this constitutional right.

There are numerous threats to individual rights, and I don?t have space to explain them all. But the next Supreme Court justice should be someone with the moral integrity to defend liberty in every case he or she encounters. Harriet Miers is not that person.