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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#291

Post by rdancer »

mike_hearn wrote: post #136
themartorana wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Text, tradition, and contemporary practice being far more important than justice, to Scalia.

But how do you define justice? Guys like Scalia see the role of the justice system as systematically enforcing the laws as written. They believe that as they are unelected, they have no moral right to simply make things up as they go along, and thus that their work should be mechanical and predictable - even if it results in a suboptimal outcome. Now, the implications of the above quote are pretty disturbing, at the…

The problem with that line of argument is that it is trivially hypocritical. As someone else has pointed out, the constitutional prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" would have been sufficient grounds.

It is also more complexly hypocritical, as his opinions are constrained by the Constitution only as much as those of the other justices, which is to say only when convenient.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#294

Post by mcherm »

cmurf wrote: post #292

This is a happy day. I am so, so, SO incredibly happy that that cranky, fucking asshole is dead. He was a terrible person, and a complete waste of space, even the space in his grave is too valuable.

I was trying to figure out how to respond to this. The best I could come up with was this: Mr. Rodgers would be disappointed in you.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#295

Post by cmurf »

cmurf wrote: post #292

This is a happy day. I am so, so, SO incredibly happy that that cranky, fucking asshole is dead. He was a terrible person, and a complete waste of space, even the space in his grave is too valuable.

I haven't been this happy since Jerry Falwell died. When it comes to women, gays, people of color, they are both hopelessly lost causes. It is the generosity of the earth that even this abysmal human being will be returned back to nature through bacteria rotting his corpse, and reincorporating it. That's his best triumph as far as I'm concerned.

In his opinion, moral objection to homosexuality was the only justification needed to criminalize it. My moral standard is that haters should be hated. So I'm better than he is for simply not saying anything nice about the man. I'm not suggesting he should go to jail for his viciousness.

He was a bad person. I'm glad his dead. I wish it had happened sooner.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#297

Post by Anechoic »

peeters wrote: post #166
tomjakubowski wrote: post #145

A dumb hypothetical because this will never happen, but: could Obama nominate himself to replace Scalia? And if the Senate somehow approved him, would he have to resign the presidency to take his spot on the bench? I don't see anything in the eligibility requirements to be President or a judge of the Supreme Court that would suggest an incompatibility. Is there relevant case law?

IIRC from a West Wing episode (where spoiler, the Speaker of the House becomes president due to an invocation of the 25th Amendment) one cannot serve two branches of the government at the same time. I'll try to find the law that backs that up. Edit: I think the rule in question is the Ineligibility Clause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineligibility_Clause . Contrary to how it was phrased in the WW, this seems to onl…

* Contrary to how it was phrased in the WW, this seems to only affect serving in the Legislative branch and the Judicial or Executive branch at the same time. I don't think it in itself puts limit on serving in the Executive and Judicial branches simultaneously.

It doesn't - John Marshall served as the Secretary of State and Chief Justice of SCOTUS at the same time under John Adams.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#298

Post by dredmorbius »

icebraining wrote: post #193
ck2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know they have a trick for that too. Just just put someone there to gavel in each day and they are technically in session. Ironically the court itself ruled that is perfectly okay to do. Senate is the ultimate politics slimebowl of tricks, they are master level.

Frankly, and as an outsider, purposefully waiting for a recess to appoint someone seems like the trick to me.

Like it or not, that trick's specifically enshrined and established in the Constitution. That same document Scalia claimed to defend to vigilantly. Probably there for good reasons.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#299

Post by lawnchair_larry »

ianamartin wrote: post #261
fpgeek wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel like that - that Justice Scalia was an thoughtful, intellectually honest justice that I profoundly disagreed with simply because I found his foundational principles alien and wrong. Then came Eldred v. Ashcroft . Larry Lessig, argued the case before the Supreme Court. In his retrospective on the case [1], Lessig describes how he built his argument on the Lopez/Morrison line of decisions which said that…

This isn't really directed at you, but it seems like a good place to address the crowd. I didn't say the man was a saint or that he was always perfectly intellectually honest all the time. No one is. But I think was a lot more of those things than he often got credit for. Some of you seem to forget that people who have different opinions than you are also people. And as such, they have the right to try to get those o…

>Some of you seem to forget that people who have different opinions than you are also people."

I think you have something in common with the people who don't like Scalia.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#300

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

ianamartin wrote: post #261
fpgeek wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel like that - that Justice Scalia was an thoughtful, intellectually honest justice that I profoundly disagreed with simply because I found his foundational principles alien and wrong. Then came Eldred v. Ashcroft . Larry Lessig, argued the case before the Supreme Court. In his retrospective on the case [1], Lessig describes how he built his argument on the Lopez/Morrison line of decisions which said that…

This isn't really directed at you, but it seems like a good place to address the crowd. I didn't say the man was a saint or that he was always perfectly intellectually honest all the time. No one is. But I think was a lot more of those things than he often got credit for. Some of you seem to forget that people who have different opinions than you are also people. And as such, they have the right to try to get those o…

> And as such, they have the right to try to get those opinions represented.

At best, Scalia represented the opinions of an opinionated and influential but not truly representative minority of the population.

Now - there's nothing in the constitution that says explicitly that the Supreme Court should be a representative body.

But the political reality is that judges aren't picked for the SC because they're the best legal minds of their generation - they're chosen for their legal minds and for their politics.

IMO, in a representative democracy, the political values of the judiciary and especially of the SC should be broadly similar to those of the population.

Did Scalia bring the SC closer to the values of the median population, or did he move it away from the median?

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