RIP Scalia

[davidm]

@davidm

An Arizona lawyer says that Scalia should be able to essentially vote from the grave.
WTF: Arizona lawyer says Scalia can vote 'from the grave' to keep Supreme Court conservative
This is of course ridiculous, and it is only one person saying it, but I’m wondering if we’re going to start hearing this idea being floated by others.

Now a second person is pushing this idea.

Heritage Fellow: Scalia's Vote Should Still Count From Beyond The Grave |...

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former George W. Bush administration Justice Department official, said last week that the Supreme Court should count the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s votes on pending cases in which the justices have already cast preliminary votes.

Von Spakovsky mentioned in particular Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case that would deal a blow to unions and in which Scalia was likely on the anti-union side.

In an interview with American Family Radio’s Sandy Rios on February 15, von Spakovsky said that Chief Justice John Roberts has “an absolute obligation” to count Scalia’s vote in Friedrichs and other cases in which justices have already held conferences.

[Bricker]

@bup

Oh, fer fucks sake. This whole sidetrack about what a cite is makes **Bricker **think he proved that Scalia was not a bully who inappropriately belittled petitioners, took favors from those who were represented before the court, trolled, and was always super-consistently a strict-constructionist until he needed to find that a corporation was a person.

Please drop the defense of the bad link.

This is a perfect example.

A strict constructionist would absolutely find that a corporation is a person. Do you imagine that finding so rests on some arcane twisting of words?

The Dictionary Act, 1 US Code § 1:

…the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals…

A strict constructionist reads the law. That’s what the law says.

Right?

[Bricker]

And of course, as always, no concession of error will be forthcoming. Right?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Bricker

A strict constructionist would absolutely find that a corporation is a person. Do you imagine that finding so rests on some arcane twisting of words?

A strict constructionist would find that the Dictionary Act definition controls interpretation of a constitutional clause? :dubious:

[Richard_Parker]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

A strict constructionist would find that the Dictionary Act definition controls interpretation of a constitutional clause? :dubious:

I suspect that Bricker was referring to Hobby Lobby.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Ah. Carry on, then.

[Richard_Parker]

Note that the same Dictionary Act says that its definition controls only where “context” does not “indicat[e] otherwise.” §1. The whole debate in that case was whether the context there, a sentence in which the “person” in question has religious beliefs, indicated that Congress did not intend to refer to for-profit corporations. IIRC, even the majority wasn’t comfortable enough with that notion to extend RFRA to all for-profit corporations.

Literal definitions rarely decide cases that make it to the Supreme Court. What matters a lot more is the extent to which context, often other text in the same statute, affects the meaning of words. *Hobby Lobby *is a great example of that.

[Bricker]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

A strict constructionist would find that the Dictionary Act definition controls interpretation of a constitutional clause? :dubious:

Not necessarily. But it controls the interpretation of 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq.

[Bricker]

@Richard_Parker

Note that the same Dictionary Act says that its definition controls only where “context” does not “indicat[e] otherwise.” §1. The whole debate in that case was whether the context there, a sentence in which the “person” in question has religious beliefs, indicated that Congress did not intend to refer to for-profit corporations. IIRC, even the majority wasn’t comfortable enough with that notion to extend RFRA to all for-profit corporations.

Not beliefs. Government may not “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion …”

That makes it clearer. A corporation can clearly exercise religion; the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington is a corporation.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

That doesn’t make it clearer at all. A corporation, by definition, cannot have a religion even if formed and operated for religious purposes.

[Bricker]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

That doesn’t make it clearer at all. A corporation, by definition, cannot have a religion even if formed and operated for religious purposes.

But it can exercise religion.

[Richard_Parker]

@Bricker

Not beliefs. Government may not “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion …”

That makes it clearer. A corporation can clearly exercise religion; the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington is a corporation.

I’m not sure that’s clearer. But the relevant point here is that this is not a textual argument. You are (correctly) forced to argue about context and intention by your reference to the Diocese of Arlington.

[Jack_Batty]

@Bricker

But it can exercise religion.

That’s bullshit twisting of words. A corporation can’t do shit, being inanimate and all that. The people who run corporations exercise religion in their corporations’ names.

Kind of like how guns don’t kill people, people do, right?

[BrainGlutton]

@Jack_Batty

That’s bullshit twisting of words. A corporation can’t do shit, being inanimate and all that. The people who run corporations exercise religion in their corporations’ names.

Kind of like how guns don’t kill people, people do, right?

But, guns have religion.

It’s a very simple one, involving human sacrifices to no deity at all, but they do have it.

[Bricker]

@Jack_Batty

That’s bullshit twisting of words. A corporation can’t do shit, being inanimate and all that. The people who run corporations exercise religion in their corporations’ names.

Kind of like how guns don’t kill people, people do, right?

Can a corporation exercise free speech rights? A corporation like, say, the New York Times? Or is that also a bullshit twisting of words, since corporations can’t do shit, being inanimate?

[raventhief]

@Bricker

But it can exercise religion.

So a corporation, that does not HAVE a religion, can exercise the religion it does not have?

[The_Tooth]

It can be the middle man. You know the saying “From your lips to God’s ears”? That’s via FedEx.

[Miller]

@Bricker

Can a corporation exercise free speech rights? A corporation like, say, the New York Times? Or is that also a bullshit twisting of words, since corporations can’t do shit, being inanimate?

If the law said that the New York Times didn’t have freedom of speech, but the individual reporters, editors, and whatnot did, would that actually affect the operation of the paper in anyway?

[raventhief]

@Bricker

Can a corporation exercise free speech rights? A corporation like, say, the New York Times? Or is that also a bullshit twisting of words, since corporations can’t do shit, being inanimate?

Is there a difference between a corporation such as the NYT exercising freedom of speech and freedom of the press?

[Jack_Batty]

@Bricker

Can a corporation exercise free speech rights? A corporation like, say, the New York Times? Or is that also a bullshit twisting of words, since corporations can’t do shit, being inanimate?

Same shit. There are actual people in charge of what the New York Times prints. The constitution protects those people and their ability to continue running their paper.