Another reported statement from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that suggests he’d really like to be a supreme talk show host using arguments that seem to be designed to shock some to make a point. File this in your Here We Go Again file:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used the twin terrors of Nazi Germany and radical Islam to warn a Snowmass Village audience Saturday about the dangers of judicial activism.
Speaking to a gathering of the Utah State Bar Association at the Westin Resort in Snowmass Village, the longest-serving justice on the nation’s highest court lamented a trend among federal judges, including his colleagues on the Supreme Court, to read and interpret the U.S. Constitution as a “living document” that changes over time.
Scalia described himself as an “originalist” in his reading of legal texts.
But wait: isn’t that itself subject to argument? Has the court since Scalia has been on it indeed delivered some decisions that have been considered it not radical, then quite activist — not just reading the constitution, but some claim twisting its meaning? (Those who like the decisions will angrily say no way, those who don’t agree with say the current court has shown itself to be conservative activists in several ways). There are many who believe the court’s decisions in helping George W. Bush take office and in Citizens United showed an activist court with most assuredly activist judges.
And here’s the quote that makes him sound like he yearns to be a fill in host for Rush Limbaugh:
Scalia opened his talk with a reference to the Holocaust, which happened to occur in a society that was, at the time, “the most advanced country in the world.” One of the many mistakes that Germany made in the 1930s was that judges began to interpret the law in ways that reflected “the spirit of the age.” When judges accept this sort of moral authority, as Scalia claims they’re doing now in the U.S., they get themselves and society into trouble.
When in doubt (on both sides) always start making a parallel to Nazi Germany.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.