Obama sees Constitution as impediment

Seven years ago, Barack Obama made what is likely to become the best closing argument against his election to the presidency.

It wasn't a speech. It was a recorded radio interview in which Obama made clear that redistribution of wealth is one of his major goals and the United States Constitution is an impediment to those goals.

Explaining the shortcomings of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Obama said that, regrettably, "the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way."

Oddly, Obama, who lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago, does not mention the legal gymnastics that the court performed in its 1973 decision that opened the door to abortion on demand. In that decision, the court acknowledged that the constitution did not contain specific language that established a woman's right to privacy, justifying abortion, but did find "emanations" from the document that it used to tweeze out such a privacy right.

Writing for the court, Justice William O. Douglas penned these words, "Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance."

A future court might perform similar gymnastics and find a judicial right to redistribution of wealth. There has been speculation that, in the event of an Obama presidency, three of the Supreme Court's nine justices might retire during his first term, giving him a chance to fashion a court more to his liking.

You can listen to Obama's recorded remaks at stoptheaclu.com.