Dianne Feinstein: “I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of ostensibly "liberal" lawyers and scholars who do not look askance…”

“I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of ostensibly "liberal" lawyers and scholars who do not look askance when they learn of my support for this amendment. Friends who otherwise respect me and admire my work have a difficult time, it seems, assimilating the notion that a liberal champion of defendants' rights--something I think I have been all my life--should take seriously the idea that the victims of violent crime actually have "rights" that the Constitution should compel government to take seriously and to treat with respect, rather than merely being the unfortunate--well, victims--of criminal predations that the state is charged with combating, in a system where the only "rights" worth naming and treating as such of course belong to those unfortunate enough to find themselves on the wrong end of the machinery of criminal justice. With all respect, I do not share that perspective. Rather, I regard its deeply ingrained nature as the principal argument for the conclusion that statutory measures will never fully suffice.”