Alito: Gay-marriage ruling pushes limits on constitutional protection of liberty
Justice Samuel Alito.
The U.S. Supreme Court had adopted a “postmodern” idea of liberty under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, Justice Samuel Alito recently said, and there could be no limit to how courts define it.
His remarks were made in an interview with Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol while addressing the same-sex marriage opinion Obergefell v. Hodges.
According to Alito, the idea of substantive due process has experienced a revival recently in nonproperty individual rights, including same-sex marriage.
“So the jurisprudential question is what limits the definition—how do we determine what liberty in the 14th Amendment means? Liberty means different things to different people,” the justice said. “The court’s conception, I said in this opinion and I believe to be true, is a very postmodern idea; it’s the freedom to define your understanding of the meaning of life. Your—it’s the right to self-expression. So if all of this is on the table now, where are the legal limits on it?”
Alito also spoke about Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Committee, the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that found the First Amendment prohibits government restriction on nonprofit political donations. Alito mentioned that former Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a book about decisions he disagreed with, including Citizens United.
“He wants an amendment to the First Amendment, which is pretty remarkable, to overrule the decision in Citizens United,” Alito said. “Citizens United, I think, is core political speech. It is a video about a candidate for the presidency of the United States. If that’s not protected by First Amendment free speech, by the First Amendment free speech guarantee, I don’t know what is.”
Hat Tip to the Blog of Legal Times.
See the interview below:
