To the Editor:
Re “A Respect for World Opinion” (editorial, Aug. 3):
It is not only the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg or the centrist
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy who occasionally look to the practices of
other nations and peoples for insight into the meaning of our
Constitution. When it suits their purposes, members of the Supreme
Court’s conservative wing do so as well.
In the McDonald v. Chicago case this past June, the court ruled that the
Second Amendment’s right to bear arms applies to the states. Writing
for the court, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, “Self-defense is a
basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the
present day.”
Bernard Joshua Kabak
New York, Aug. 3, 2010
To the Editor:
In “A Respect for World Opinion,” you support the Supreme Court’s
considering foreign law in its rulings, as the court did in a 2005
opinion striking down the death penalty for older teenagers. Using
foreign law, however, is a two-edged sword. Had the Supreme Court in the
Pentagon Papers case looked to Britain’s Official Secrets Act, it would
have justified prior restraint, and The Times would have legitimately
criticized using foreign law to overturn this hallowed First Amendment
principle. In France, affirmative action is not permissible, but
regulating religious clothing in public is. Should the courts look to
Middle Eastern and African law on gay rights?
What The Times advocates amounts to forum shopping, or cherry-picking
foreign law—yes when it supports what The Times and others want the
law in America to be, and no, if not. The Times may reject the view of
those who oppose turning to foreign law, but calling those who disagree
isolationists and xenophobes, while inappropriate, is still protected by
the First Amendment—which it would not be under much of foreign law.
Stephen H. Schwartz
Williamstown, Mass., Aug. 3, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 