All he has to do is stick with his pisans, Scalia and Alito.

Thomas is the strictest constructionist on the court.

His Kelo and Raich opinions were blinding in their clarity and adherence to liberty.

Funny thing is, Scalia and Thomas are originalists, not strict constructionists. Scalia has flat-out said that he is not a not a strict constructionist, and considers strict constructionism to be a degraded and disreputable form of textualism.

Furthermore, Giuliani's own history on civil rights indicates that he's not much in favor of them. He once claimed that the words "due process" don't appear in the US Constitution, and his attempt to impose content-based funding requirements is well-known.

And strict constructionism is in opposition to civil rights, according to William Rehnquist, who helped popularize the term.

Whatever, he's obviously trying to spin for a conservative audience, to whom the phrase "strict constructionist" and allusions to Alito and Scalia are code word for "let the states decide abortion and gay marriage." They just want him to reassure them on that score so they can feel comfortable voting for him, for other reasons.

The gun lobby will be harder to crack, but I bet he will have an answer for them too.

However unbelievable this is, I'm pleased to see he's doing it. If pressed, he would probably say that while he is in favor of gay rights, abortion rights, etc., he doesn't want them imposed by the judiciary.

Avram, "strict constructionism" is simply the politician's version of originalism. Don't try to analyze the term too deeply. It means, Keep the judiciary out of it, unless the Constitution is clear. And give up that nonsense about its being code for opposition to civil rights. I could counter that "free speech" is a code term for Communists and p*rn*graphers, which would be equally idiotic.

Attila, sure, you could argue that. The difference is you'd just be making things up, while I'd be drawing on a memo William Rehnquist wrote to then-President Nixon about appointing judges to reverse what conservatives than saw as criminal-coddling Supreme Court decisions like Miranda v Arizona.

Here, in Rehnquist's own words:

A judge who is a "strict constructionist" in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs -- the latter two groups having been the principal beneficiaries of the Supreme Court's "broad constructionist" reading of the Constitution.

Avram, I hate to break it to you, but Nixon was a politician. And Rehnquist, at that time, was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, not yet a justice on the Supreme Court. They were mapping political strategy.

And as long as we're talking about equating interpretation with politics, it was the left that pushed the notion that if you ruled against a civil-rights plaintiff, you were anti-civil-rights, no matter what the law said. That was the victors' history written about the Bork nomination.

Bork didn't believe the IXth Amendment had any effect.

Talk about legislating from the bench.

Attila, I notice three things about your reply:

First, you start off with "I hate to break it to you", a claim that, in online arguments, is always a lie.

Second, although phrased as a rebuttal, there is no material in your comment that actually rebuts the claim I made.

Third, and then you tried to change the subject.