The fact that today the court’s right-leaning bloc has far more interesting internal disagreements than the often lock-step-voting liberal wing is itself a testament to the premium its leading intellectual light placed on philosophical rigor and integrity.
.. and it makes it impossible to imagine Republican senators confirming an Obama appointee in the next 11 months. And it’s probably a good thing for the republic that they won’t: If there is to be a liberal replacement for a figure as towering as Scalia, if the court is about to swing sharply to the left, it’s far better for the judicial branch’s legitimacy if that swing follows a democratic election, a campaign in which the high court stakes are front and center in the race.
What Liberals Learned From Antonin Scalia
Justice Scalia’s enormous influence was not on actual case outcomes, at least not directly. For someone who sat on the court for three decades, he wrote few significant majority opinions. What he did was change how we talk about the law.
.. Justice Scalia was among the first to argue that constitutional interpreters should not be interested in the intentions of the framers but in the original meaning of the words they used. Original meaning turned out to be a life vest for the theory, keeping it afloat among conservative legal scholars and even some liberal ones... For Justice Scalia and his fans, you viewed modern issues through an 18th-century quizzing glass or else you were an “activist.” There was no in between.His laser-sharp dissents garnered a lot of attention, but he didn’t just talk through his opinions. He talked to lawyers and to legions of law students, using his charisma and the simplicity of his message to recruit foot soldiers who could peddle his message through organizations like the Federalist Society.
Liberals, meanwhile, have struggled to rally around a coherent alternative language in which to talk about the Constitution.
.. Justice Scalia lost some panache in his later years. The elegies you will read over the coming days and weeks may not mention that, perhaps appropriately, but it was well known to close watchers of the court. His dissents were rarely witty, his jokes too many and not funny. More than occasionally, his questions at oral argument reflected inattention to the details of the record.
What the Death of Justice Antonin Scalia Means for Religious Liberty
The justice, who died Saturday, consistently argued that the United States is fundamentally religious, meaning that the government shouldn’t have to avoid religious displays—nativity scenes on public property, prayers at townhall meetings, and the like.
The Remarkable Life of Antonin Scalia
He joined the majority to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013; at oral arguments, he referred to the historic law as a “racial entitlement.”
.. Most justices believe that the Eighth Amendment limits how states can wield the ultimate punishment. Scalia argued instead that the amendment should be interpreted by its original understanding, when capital punishment was the norm in American criminal justice. Accordingly, he fiercely opposed most modern restrictions on its scope, including bans on juvenile death sentences and executions of the mentally disabled, that moderates like Justices Kennedy and John Paul Stevens favored.