Rudy: I'm a strict constructionist

Following is a transcript of Mayor Giuliani’s address today to the SC GOP’s executive committee in Columbia, South Carolina, with regard to the mayor’s judicial philosophy:

On the Federal judiciary I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am. I’m a lawyer. I’ve argued cases in the Supreme Court. I’ve argued cases in the Court of Appeals in different parts of the country. I have a very, very strong view that for this country to work, for our freedoms to be protected, judges have to interpret not invent the Constitution. Otherwise you end up, when judges invent the constitution, with your liberties being hurt. Because legislatures get to make those decisions and the legislature in South Carolina might make that decision one way and the legislature in California a different one. And that’s part of our freedom and when that’s taken away from you that’s terrible. President Bush has the great model because I think as the President he did appointed (sic) some really good ones and both of them are former colleagues of mine - Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. Justice Scalia is a former colleague of mine. Somebody that … I think Chief Justice Roberts is a great chief justice and he’s young and he can have a long career and that’s probably the reason the President and Vice President chose him. I think those are the kinds of justices I would appoint – Scalia, Alito and Roberts. If you can find anybody as good as that, you are very, very fortunate.

I don’t know how the mayor can say it any more clearly than that.

Rudy will be just as good on judges as President Bush has been for conservatives. The idea that “millions of pro-lifers” will sit out the general election if Rudy is the GOP nominee now becomes, quite frankly, insane. President Giuliani will appoint judges in the mold of Scalia, Alito, and Roberts. We know that because he just told us. Whoever the Democratic nominee is will appoint clones of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The choice during the general for social conservatives will be as simple as that.

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