University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone (yes, the same Geoffrey Stone who thinks that legal reasoning can be called into question by pointing out the religious affiliations of those doing the reasoning) commits a flagrant straw-person fallacy in this New York Times op-ed column. No self-respecting conservative thinks that the job of a judge in a constitutional case is merely to "apply the law" in a mechanical manner. By the same token, no self-respecting progressive thinks that the job of a judge in a constitutional case is to legislate. These are absurd extremes that are unworthy of serious discussion. The debate lies between those extremes. Conservatives believe that progressive judges legislate when they should not, while progressives believe that conservative judges make mechanical decisions when they should not. The difference is one of degree, not kind. Professor Stone needs a course in Critical Thinking so that he can avoid committing simple fallacies.
Addendum: My Ph.D. dissertation (1989), written under the direction of Joel Feinberg, is entitled Constitutional Interpretation.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 