University of Miami Law Prof Wants ‘Redo’ of the First and Second Amendments
“Once a defense of the powerless, the First Amendment over the last hundred years has mainly become a weapon of the powerful”
This is something you hear from the left every once in a while. They think they know better than the authors of the U.S. Constitution.
The College Fix reports:
Radical law professor advocates ‘redo’ of First and Second Amendments
The University of Miami’s Mary Anne Franks is back with her critical/collectivist take on the Constitution, this time advocating a “redo” of the Bill of Rights’ first two amendments.
Writing in The Boston Globe, Franks, author of the book “The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech,” says neither the First nor Second Amendment “is a model of clarity or precision,” and that “both are deeply flawed” with regards to free expression and self-defense.
The amendments are “highly susceptible to being read in isolation from the Constitution as a whole,” Franks says, as well as their “commitment to equality and the collective good.”
The First and Second Amendments tend to be interpreted in aggressively individualistic ways that ignore the reality of conflict among competing rights. This in turn allows the most powerful members of society to reap the benefits of these constitutional rights at the expense of vulnerable groups. Both amendments would be improved by explicitly situating individual rights within the framework of “domestic tranquility” and the “general welfare” set out in the Constitution’s preamble.
The idea that First Amendment protections are skewed toward powerful individuals is fairly common among radical legal thinkers. Feminist Catharine MacKinnon of the University of Michigan, for instance, believes “free speech reinforces and amplifies injustice.”
“Once a defense of the powerless, the First Amendment over the last hundred years has mainly become a weapon of the powerful,” MacKinnon wrote. “Legally, what was, toward the beginning of the 20th century, a shield for radicals, artists and activists, socialists and pacifists, the excluded and the dispossessed, has become a sword for authoritarians, racists and misogynists, Nazis and Klansmen, pornographers and corporations buying elections.”
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
It is hard to believe that these two individuals are law professors. The Bill of Rights were designed to protect individuals against the excesses of government, not to insure equal results for all at all times.
Not that hard. Professors are hired by other professors and they choose candidates who wrote ‘law review’ articles with the right kind of opinions. Law review is just an editorial page for lawyers.
“Competing rights” and “vulnerable groups” is another way of saying “identity politics”
Leftists would like nothing better than to clamp down on our free speech, freedom of religion, and self protection. That would leave us at the mercy of their “enhanced” government. These are a poor excuse for “law professors”.
This is similar to what Stalin and other socialists have done, including the reconstruction of their own version of history and removing monuments that remind us of real history.
Another professor acting on feeeeeelingsss, rather than logic.
The first and second amendments should indeed be read in context, but that context is not the constitution as a whole, or the preamble, but the rest of the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights is meant to be read in isolation from the constitution. It was not part of the original constitution. It came to amend the constitution by correcting a serious flaw in it — precisely the clauses that Frank cites!
The Philadelphia convention proposed this constitution to the people, and the people immediately objected to this collectivist implication they saw in it, and agreed to ratify it only on condition that it would immediately be amended to protect individual rights.
Another “progressive” professor in need of a mental colonic!
Interesting development. The totalitarian left has in the past been reluctant to advertise its hatred of free speech so explicitly.
At least they are honest in their analysis and acknowledge the long-standing reading of the First Amendment. One problem that I have is that scholars who read the First Amendment as protecting individual rights balk at reading the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to bear arms. (Instead they read it only as applying to militias.)
If you read Prof. Kinde’s article on the need for an Anti-racism Constitutional Amendment, he is very honest about his policy position being prohibited under the Constitution as currently written. All of these scholars acknowledge that their prefered policy position is unconstitutional.
Memo for Mary Ann Franks: You can wish all you want, but you’ve got a better chance of meeting Elvis working the cash register at a Vegas 7-11 than you do of seeing the 1st and 2nd Amendments revised, much less repealed.
P.S. If you think you’d get 2/3 of the House and Senate and 3/4 of the states on board with changing the above amendments, I’d love to know what crazy s**t you’re smoking–it must be really good stuff.
Translation: We don’t like it when people think they have rights.
Oh you left out their Second Amendment “wisdom.” They want to replace it with a guarantee of government protection. This in a country where every piece of jurisprudence that has ever asked the question, “does the government have a duty to protect the common citizen” has answered it with a resounding “NO.” (Warren v. DC is the classic citation, but there are may others.)
Well, they would say that’s precisely why we “need” a revised second amendment, to impose such a duty on the government in return for our loss of the right to protect ourselves.
How decidedly liberal…the rights of individuals should be trampled by the rights of collectivists.
Franks also writes for various news media outlets, including The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Independent, and the Daily Dot. ”
Franks is a fing commie
Dang she’s purdy thpugh!
of course she ‘identifies’ with her asian side even though her daddy’s white genes won the race. That lady’s NEVER been discriminated against based on ‘race’.
OK, prof. Let’s see your proposed rewrites.
Mary Anne Franks: I used to line up my stuffed animals and teach them lessons. Even from an early age, I really wanted to teach. Although when you’re six your teaching repertoire is somewhat limited. Then I went through various phases: I had dreams of being a psychologist, an actor, a dancer, a lawyer, and benevolent dictator of the world.
__________________________________________________________________
direct quote from her bio–a “benevolent dictator” indeed–the rights of “collectivists” are superior to the rights of “individuals?”–is she just too stupid to see that the first ammendment protects her right to spew her bs vs getting a righteous bonk over the head with a shillelagh?
Over educated TW?T(no common sense) like these MORONIC so-called professors need to have the faces restructured from a beating for speaking out of their collective ARSES! THEN maybe they would LEARN why the FIRST & the SECOND ARE in OUR CONSTITUTION as CIVIL RIGHTS of the PEOPLE!
Individual rights are exactly what those amendments were meant to protect, Mary Ann