Let’s be clear on this: he did not “mock the other justices.” He read the ruling in a mocking tone. He was, according to the news report, mocking the ruling and the reasoning underlying it, and not his individual colleagues.
And it bears repeating: Scalia was speaking to an audience who had come specifically to hear what he thought of the court’s current jurisprudence. If he thinks that jurisprudence is stupid, he’d be doing his audience a disservice if he said otherwise.
minty:
I think it’s fair to say that in the entire time I have been on these boards, and even participated in the Pit, I have almost never given in to the temptation to spew harsh language.
However.
Bite my bag, you pretentious ass.
You criticism of Scalia is utterly misplaced. His comments are, as DCU cogently observes, no different than any public figure criticizing the actions taken by his or her political brethern. I have no doubt that each and every Democratic presidential hopeful on the campiagn trail will have harsh words to say about Republican decisions, especially those for which “the vote is over” and their side lost.
I harbor no expectation, however, that you will spend the merest scintilla of effort to criticize those actions, because, I daresay, you agree with the original critiques. Had the vote gone the other way in Lawrence, and Souter made similar public comments, I can’t picture you foaming at the mouth about it – because you’d agree with Souter.
That’s partisanship at its worst. Your standards for permitting or condemning public discourse ebb and flow with the political wind of the discourse in question.
That sucks wet farts, you asswipe.
The news reports of the event I have read makes the whole thing sound shockingly inappropriate. If a justice disagrees, that’s cool. That’s their job. I’d be more worried if they all agreed on everything all the time. To say publically that you disagreed is fine, too, although I don’t know what more of substance you could add to the disagreement that wouldn’t fit in a dissenting opinion. But to openly mock your fellow justices debases the office. Is there any kind of precedent for this kind of thing? Has a sitting justice ever done something like this before? I don’t think so, but I honestly don’t know and ask for my ignorance, and the ignorance of others, to be dispelled.
Well if you’re going to claim the whole issue is the “mocking tone” I think you’ve got to see a video to judge the appropriateness of it - I think its hard to judge decorum based on the mere statement that he used a “mocking tone”. And the issue of the “partisan” audience is nonsense. “Partisan” is just a sinister-sounding way of saying “people who tend to share his ideology”. Nothing wrong with that.
Anyway, FWIW, this seems to be a pretty good article exploring the issues of Federal judges speaking out about political and legal issues. Might be worth a read.
Otto
Sounds like you will tolerate dissenting opinions only as long as they aren’t influential. Not how it works.
Giving a speech at a think tank is not “embroiling [one]self in partisan politics,” even if that think tank has a well-known slant. Surely you woudn’t bitch about Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivering a keynote to the ACLU or People for the American Way. Clarence Thomas was disinvited from speaking to the NAACP a few years back; surely you wouldn’t complain if he had given the speech as planned.
Heck, the ISI claims to be nonpartisan. I don’t doubt that that’s a load of hooey, but it’s a load of hooey when the above listed organizations claim it, too. **
Each of these items would violate the Canons of Judicial Ethics and you know it.
Besides, slippery slope arguments are pathetic. You should know that by now. **
He didn’t mock his colleagues. He mocked the decision. What is that, if not “[t]ak[ing] issue with their reasoning, their analysis [and] their case cites”? He didn’t call Anthony Kennedy an incompetent douchebag; he said the opinion was extraordinarily stupid. Surely you can see the difference. **
There is no distinction in this case between criticism and mocking. When we debate the court’s jurisprudence on these boards, both sides routinely mock the arguments they find absurd as a means of illustrating just how silly they find the court’s reasoning. Scalia’s comments are no different.
Well, the Scalia types claim to be interested only in limiting federal government power. So far as they are concerned, the states should still be allowed to permit slavery.
So, if I mock your posts, it means that I am not mocking you? If I read your post to my wife with my nose curled, imitating a fat old snobby English fop, I am not mocking you? Is that anything like the bizarre rule in Debates that you can call a post stupid, but not its creator?
That merely highlights what a bad decision it was for him to accept the engagement. Stating publicly that the justices are stupid — oh, excuse me, that their jurisprudence is stupid — seems to me to be a disservice to the institution he serves.
Glossing over oppression and persecution by calling it “dissent” is classic. Keep up the good work.
It sounds like some people in this thread are deflecting attention from Scailia’s actions and focusing them on the OP. Come on, guys. The same standard of decorum can’t possibly apply to a faceless stranger on an internet board as applies to a Supreme Court justice!
Or if it does, I’m paying a buttload of money for a legal education for nothing.
-C
Patently false. Please read the 13th amendment.
“Scalia types” do not want to abolish constitutional restrictions on government action. They do want to ensure that the judiciary doesn’t manufacture such restrictions apart from the constitutional text.
No, asecnray, because the “Scalia types” are able to read the plain words of the Constitution, and understand what they mean. This is why the slavery issue is well-understood by the Scalia-types. You, clearly, do not grasp it; and truthfully, I’d be mroe worried about the threat of slavery from someone who is willing to read entirely new meanings into the plain words of the law than someone who is willing only to read the law as it’s written.
Correct, Correct, and Correct (and it’s not a bizarre rule).
I can respect a poster and still think a particular argument advanced by that poster is stupid. **
Again: there is a difference between calling an individual stupid and calling a particular judicial opinion stupid. I have nothing but the highest respect for the intellects of all nine Supreme Court justices, but I still think that certain opinions penned by them are stupid to the point of absurdity.
I agree with Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence. I don’t believe that the law at issue was the right law, but that doesn’t make it unconstitutional in my mind. Does that make me a bigot too Minty?
Nope, just a poor constitutional interpreter.
Add me to the list of poor constitutional interpreters, then. Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence was accurate, and the majority was dishonest. When the issue is Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court (including members of the Lawrence majority) couldn’t say enough great things about the value of stare decisis. When the issue was Lawrence, the choir singing the praises of stare decisis fell conspicuously silent.
This has nothing to do with bigotry. It has to do with following the right process. If I were a Texas voter, I’d have fought to remove legislators that were responsible for that bigoted law. BUT IT WAS NOT A FEDERAL CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE.
Now, alas, it is.
This has everything to do with the willingness to use the federal courts to achieve results that the legislature was unwilling to offer.
That’s what Scalia said, and he wasn’t wrong.
That you would read what I wrote and formulate this response makes me fear for you.
Did I say that I did not “tolerate dissenting opinions”? No, I did not. I said that, in measuring the effect of minty’s blasting Scalia on a message board against Scalia’s blasting his colleagues and speaking out publicly on cases, there is an almost immeasurable difference in degree. minty to the best of my knowledge has no ability to affect the destinies of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people now and for untold years into the future. Scalia exercises enormous power, authority and influence over the lives of every American and by extension over huge segments of the non-American population. So, like I said the first time, Scalia is every bit as free to spew his bile as minty is. But his bile spews over a wider range and has greater consequences, so he should feel obliged to be a bit more careful about it. Not really that difficult a concept, is it?
Except that Scalia is blatantly disingenuous when he makes this claim. His arguments have nothing to do with plain words or strict construction or original meaning. He merely refers to such principles when it’s convenient and ignores them when they’re not. Scalia is the most intellectually dishonest justice on that court. And then he heaps praise on himself for being principled and derision on his colleagues for being unprincipled. That makes him a liar. On top of that he’s arrogant, obnoxious, sadistic, and delusional.
This is why my statement is well-understood as hyperbole. You, clearly, do not grasp it.
Sorrowfully, I note that Bricker wrote
Bricker, you know I have great respect for you and I routinely bow to your superior legal knowledge, but in this instance you are dead wrong. The majority was correct in saying that Bowers was wrongly decided to begin with. The acknowledged swing vote in Bowers, Justice Powell, stated after his retirement that he believed he had voted incorrectly with the majority and that the dissent had the better argument. The idea that a federal constitutional right to privacy would keep the government out of the bedrooms of heterosexuals but not homosexuals engaging in the exact same conduct is offensive to the deepest core of what the concepts of freedom and liberty that the Constitution is supposed to embody. Stare decisis is no defense to the overturning of a wrong decision and it is ridiculous to believe that Scalia would allow stare decisis to halt him for a fraction of a second if he gets the opportunity to overturn a decision of only slightly older vintage, say, Roe v Wade.
Federal courts exist in part precisely so that those whose rights have been denied have recourse to petition for a redress of those grievances. That First Amendment right applies to petitioning the judicial branch too, not just the legislative. There is not a damn thing wrong with the concept of those who have a legitimate grievance with one branch of government seeking redress from another branch and you know it. If a state has a law which violates the federal constitution, the idea that the branch of the federal government charged with interpreting the federal constitution is not the appropriate venue to raise the issue is ludicrous and bizarre.
Alas, Bricker beat me to the response, and did a far better job of it no doubt than I would have. This thread though, really isn’t about Lawrence. Still, Minty has made the claim in his OP that Scalia is a bigot, a claim for which I see no support.
All of you who think Scalia is just some nut job who doesn’t believe in individual freedoms should read his recent opinion on the 4th amendment. Kyllo v. U.S., 533 U.S. 27, 121 S. Ct. 2038 (2001). Note that Scalia, for the majority, ruled that the use of thermal imaging to learn about what was going on inside a house was a search within the meaning of the 4th amendment, while Stevens, O’Connor, Kennedy and Rhenquist would have ruled that it was not.
While no Justice is ever completely consistent, I find Scalia to be more consistent than others. Does he always follow his strict originalist line? No, he doesn’t. But then, Ginsburg, Stevens, and Breyer aren’t exactly the models of constitutional consistency some here would have us believe they are. Scalia, IMHO, is the best judge on the Court, and the one whose opinions will best withstand the test of time.
I’ll join in with minty, just for the hell of it. The Supreme Court is not just another branch of government. It depends on its moral authority for its stature, the moral authority created by an image of careful, reasoned deliberation followed by acceptance of its verdicts. Once it makes a ruling, that is supposed to be the final resolution. For those members on the short end of the vote, criticizing the ruling in public cannot change the result but only undermines the public acceptance of its other rulings.
That is NOT the same as in the legislative branch, where matters are never final, decisions are revisited and modified constantly, and commentary both public and private on existing votes can have an effect on future votes, even on the same issue. A denunciation of a vote from someone on the short end can be appropriate and even necessary. In the executive branch, it can be even more appropriate and necessary.
So yes, Scalia’s an asswipe for whining in public. Is that a surprise to anyone? Is there even any precedent for such conduct by a sitting Justice?
Bricker, faithful application of stare decisis would leave us with Plessey and Dred Scott intact, wouldn’t it? Gotta have some flexibility and realism in the higher courts that are really policymaking bodies, no?