Federal Judiciary

A Non Sequitur From George Will

By AndrewHyman

In a column today, George Will says:

There must be a judicial leash on governments to prevent them from arbitrarily asserting that the plain language of a statute means something that it plainly does not say.

So far so good. Then he turns around and arbitrarily asserts that the plain language of the Equal Protection Clause means something that it plainly does not say:

[E]qual protection ? should mean that government may interfere with a citizen's economic liberty only to promote important government interests that cannot be advanced through less restrictive means.

The Equal Protection Clause obviously says nothing about "a citizen", but only about how different citizens are treated in comparison to each other. Maybe some other part of the Constitution contains Will's non-interference principle (I doubt it), but certainly the Equal Protection Clause has nothing to do with it.

Hat Tip: Bench Memos.

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Full post as published by ConfirmThem on March 20, 2008 (boomark / email).