Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg To Egypt: “Don’t Look To That Stuffy Old US Constitution As A Model”

by William Teach | February 3, 2012 9:17 am

MEMRI[1] has the video of an interview with sitting US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg with Al-Hayat TV on January 30, 2012.

From the transcript[2]

I can’t speak about what the Egyptian experience should be, because I’m operating under a rather old constitution. The United States, in comparison to Egypt, is a very new nation, and yet we have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world.

And the big pull, around the 2:27 mark

You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary… It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US constitution – Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world?

It’s almost like she doesn’t care for the US Constitution (which, last time I checked, was an “independent judiciary”), but, then, most Liberals don’t, because our Constitution, and I’d conclude she’s speaking more in terms of the Bill of Rights portion, guarantees the People’s rights against the government, limits the governments actions, rather than the government being some all powerful force that can enact it’s will on the People.

Endnotes:
  1. MEMRI: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3295.htm
  2. transcript: http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/3295.htm

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