Constitutional knowledge not required

To the editor:

The Flotsam & Jetsam section of your September 14-27 issue, after stating that “Hillary Clinton has a law degree, so it’s pretty certain she knows the Constitution,” takes her campaign to task for excluding a sign-carrying heckler from a Portsmouth Clinton for President event.

Unfortunately, possession of a law degree is no assurance of any knowledge of the Constitution, state or federal. Law schools require only one semester of constitutional law, and there being little money in that particular field, most law students only take the minimum requirement.

Moreover, in that one course, one does not study the Constitution at all, but only what the U.S. Supreme Court has said about it — which is to say it is a chronology of the prejudices and social and economic policy preferences of the majority of the court’s membership at any given time. Supreme Court judges, too, are not required to know anything about the Constitution as a condition of appointment to their offices, as their published opinions so often painfully demonstrate to those who don’t unquestioningly accept them as holy writ.

Further, the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment is specifically directed against legislation by Congress. Hillary Clinton is not Congress. She is an individual running for president of the United States, and as such she has every right to include or exclude from her campaign events whomever she chooses.

N.H. Rep. Gregory M. Sorg
Easton