President Obama announced his nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his pick for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Kagan has a rather impressive resume. One item on Kagan’s resume is that she clerked with Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom she considers her mentor. Apparently the RNC thinks Kagan’s Marshall ties are a bad thing. They are upset about an article that Kagan wrote after Marshall’s death:
The comments in question came from a 1993 tribute to Marshall that Kagan penned in the Texas Law Review. She quoted from a speech Marshall gave in 1987 in which he said the Constitution as originally conceived and drafted was “defective.”
OMG, the Constitution is defective! How dare Marshall say such a thing! I wonder why Marshall would say something like that…
Marshall cited in particular the definition in the original Constitution to slaves as representing three-fifths of “free Persons” when counting the nation’s population. That reference was rendered moot after the Civil War with the ratification of the 13th and 14th amendments abolishing slavery and granting full citizenship to all people born in the U.S.
Oh yeah, that. Oopsie!
Even the Founding Fathers realized that the Constitution was imperfect – that’s why they made it amendable. In fact, they added the first 10 amendments.