In This Issue

The judicial branch of government has taken center stage this year in the battle over whether we live under objective law that secures individual freedom or the whims of elites who would limit liberty in the name of their personal social preferences. To help us think about filling vacancies on the nation's top court we have David Mayer, a professor of law and history at Capital University in Ohio and well known to members of The Objectivist Center, both for his articles in Navigator and for his Summer Seminar lectures. As we prepare for the first change in the make-up of the Supreme Court since 1994, I am extremely pleased to be publishing his essay “The Next Chief Justice.”

Mayer begins by pointing out something most of us have probably forgotten. One might think that a nation’s chief executive—as head of the country’s armed forces—should take an oath to protect his country, or perhaps his country’s citizens. But that is not what the president of the United States swears to do. Rather, he swears that he will, “to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Thus, at no point in his tenure, Mayer writes, will President George W. Bush have a better opportunity to fulfill his oath of office than in the coming months, when he will likely be able to nominate two individuals to the Supreme Court, including a new Chief Justice. How well the president carries out his responsibility, Mayer says, will depend upon the principles of constitutional interpretation that his nominees bring to the Court. Mayer then explains just what those principles should be and who he thinks would make a good Chief Justice, although the answer to the latter question should be evident from this month’s cover. 

As a bonus to readers of The New Individualist, a separate article by Mayer examines one of the year’s most interesting Supreme Court decisions, the decision on medical marijuana, which involved just those fundamental principles of constitutional interpretation that will be at issue when the president nominates the next justice. 

My own contribution to this issue also focuses on a recent Supreme Court case: the infamous eminent-domain case of Kelo v. City of New London, brought to the Court by our friends at the Institute for Justice. The deplorable decision in Kelo seems to have served as a wake-up call for many people who had not realized how far the right to property has been lost in this country—and how much that right means to them. 

Lastly, for a change of pace, David Kelley reviews a movie about New York City schoolchildren competing in a ballroom-dance contest. Through that unlikely means, philosopher Kelley finds, these kids are taught some of life’s most important lessons, regarding competition, achievement, and self-esteem. Catch Mad Hot Ballroom in the theater near you or on DVD when it's available on that medium.