June 1, 2006 2:16PM # Supreme Court, Meet Sweet Science By [Mark Moller](https://www.cato.org/people/mark-moller) --- SHARE Debates about constitutional rights often take the form of either-or propositions. Either the Supreme Court must take an iron stand on high principle, come what may, or we are left with a world of politics-takes-all. More often than not, that intuition is right. But sometimes, the court can take a few lessons from the sweet science of boxing. Great fighters don’t always win the fight in a toe-to-toe slug match. In hard fights, it can take a bit of fancy footwork. As I argue in this [piece](http://www.reason.com/hod/mm060106.shtml), that’s exactly what’s needed in a confrontation between the Supreme Court and the president over NSA surveillance. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).