The Adams Affair continues. Yesterday, I wrote about Hagan Scotten's resignation letter. Here, I want to focus on another sentence Scotten wrote that does not quite make the point he intended:
No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.
The phrase "ordered liberty" was most famously used by Justice Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut (1937). Provisions of the Bill of Rights were incorporated if they were "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty." Not exactly some sort of clear, or formalist test. More like an "I know it when I see it approach" to liberty.
