The Virtue Of A Democratic System With

People Look At Rights As If They Were Muscles — The More You Exercise Them, The Better They Get.

Nowhere Else In The Constitution Does A "right" Attributed To "the People" Refer To Anything Other Than An Individual Right. What Is More, In All Six Other Provisions Of The Constitution That Mention "the People," The Term Unambiguously Refers To All Members Of The Political Community, Not An Unspecified Subset... The Second Amendment Extends, Prima Facie, To All Instruments That Constitute Bearable Arms... The Very Text Of The Second Amendment Implicitly Recognizes The Pre-existence Of The Right And Declares Only That It "shall Not Be Infringed."

If We're Picking People To Draw Out Of Their Own Conscience And Experience A 'new' Constitution, We Should Not Look Principally For Good Lawyers. We Should Look To People Who Agree With Us. When We Are In That Mode, You Realize We Have Rendered The Constitution Useless.

There Is No Basis In Text, Tradition, Or Even In Contemporary Practice (if That Were Enough), For Finding In The Constitution A Right To Demand Judicial Consideration Of Newly Discovered Evidence Of Innocence Brought Forward After Conviction. My Concern Is That In Making Life Easier For Ourselves We Not Appear To Make It Harder For The Lower Federal Courts, Imposing Upon Them The Burden Of Regularly Analyzing Newly-discovered-evidence-of-innocence Claims In Capital Cases (in Which Event Such Federal Claims, It Can Confidently Be Predicted, Will Become Routine And Even Repetitive).

Campaign Promises Are - By Long Democratic Tradition - The Least Binding Form Of Human Commitment.