You raise a couple interesting points in your first paragraph. First, I did not mean to imply that the provisions of the Constitution are or should be irrelevant to the operation of the courts as constitutional creations. But I do agree with Lysander Spooner, in his The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, when he wrote:

“If these doctrines are correct, then those contracts of government, state and national, which we call constitutions, are void, and unlawful, so far as they purport to authorize, (if any of them do authorize,) anything in violation of natural justice, or the natural [*10] rights of any man or class of men whatsoever. And all judicial tribunals are bound, by the highest obligations that can rest upon them, to declare that these contracts, in all such particulars, (if any such there be,) are void, and not law. And all agents, legislative, executive, judicial and popular, who voluntarily lend their aid to the execution of any of the unlawful purposes of the government, are as much personally guilty, according to all the moral and legal principles, by which crime, in its essential character, is measured, as though they performed the same acts independently, and of their own volition.”

Many people, looking back with regard to American slavery, would I think support the above principle as self-evident, as they also would with respect to judges under the Nazi regime. If the principle was valid then with respect to American slavery and the Nazi’s effort to exterminate Jews, it’s as valid today.

More interesting is your suggestion that I acknowledged some authority in the common law but none in the Constitution and that it was inconsistent of me to do so. I’ll have to think that over.

P.S. On further reflection, I can see why an innocent defendant wrongly accused of rape or child molestation might want to personally cross-examine his accuser rather than have an attorney do it (even though most every criminal defense attorney would say this is a very bad idea), on the theory that it will be more difficult for the accuser to lie to the accused in response to the accused’s questions than in response to the accused attorney’s questions. This makes it an easier case. But my intention in this post was not to come down on one side or the other.

Why is it difficult to understand that the asserted “right” of the alleged victim of a crime to be protected against the indignity and annoyance of being cross-examined by the pro se defendant (or his agent the lawyer, and that is essentially an agency relationship in our system, like it or not) is a sham based on the assumption that the alleged victim must be in fact a victim? Under those circumstances, the assumption is that the defendant is guilty and has no rights.

But that’s not our system (or the common law system, for that matter) which presumes innocence and provides for a right of confrontation (however much it may be limited) and no concomitant right to avoid confrontation.

The issue may not be a legal “slam dunk” (your phrase) if by that you mean that the courts will always get it right. But it’s certainly a slam dunk in terms of legal principles.