In the case of Antonin Scalia, Justice, SCOTUS vs. Nadine Strossen, president, American Civil Liberties Union, the jury finds that Justice Scolia is a judicial bigot.
Justice Scalia debated Nadine Strossen in a televised debate yesterday.
While claiming,
. . .nothing in the Constitution supports abortion rights and the use of race in school admissions, AP Miami Herald
Scalia went on to defend his position,
“Whether it’s good or bad is not my job. My job is simply to say if those things you find desirable are contained in the Constitution,” he said.
There’s a conservative limited view of justice; there’s a defense of the iron-clad Constitution. Good job, Justice Scalia, last bastion upholder of the American Way. His sentiments are neatly balanced by the implication of his judicial philosophy that if rights aren’t strictly referred to in the Constitution, they’re reserved for government.
Except, there’s just a little bit of a problem with bringing that inflexible attitude to the bench of this Nation’s highest court. And a hint of closeted bigotry, too.
. . .such a legal approach would have barred the landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.
This ruling came at a time in our history when neither state governments or the federal government had any intention of changing the status quo of an oppressed minority, easing their way into a status of equality supposedly protected by our founding father’s intentions in a document preceding the Constitution — the Declaration of Independence.
Scalia wants us to know that appointed, not elected, liberal judges have gone too far in “granting” civil rights. He characterizes their rulings as “improper” behavior. Well, thank you, Mr. Moral Arbiter. And he warns, like an Old Testament god that
“Someday, you’re going to get a very conservative Supreme Court and regret that approach.”
He thinks abortion rights for women are unconstitutional “political” rights. Guess he’s telling us women are chattel, incapable of making medical decisions regarding their own bodies. Exactly. Because Scalia self-confesses that his judicial philosophy adheres to
interpreting the Constitution according to its text, as understood at the time it was adopted.
He’s also clairvoyent and can communicate with the dead! How else can he know how the writers of the Constitution “understood it at the time”?
For Scalia, the Age of Enlightenment died with the 18th C. and probably would have been better not being an Age at all. For Scalia, the march of human progress stopped in 1781, and probably should have been interrupted when Jefferson, et. al, penned the Declaration. For Scalia, time’s arrow needs to be turned back. Back to the time of Moses, probably, since Scalia supports displaying the 10 Commandments in court houses.
Scalia, who must have realized he appeared Medieval at best and Hunnish at worst during his televised debate with the ACLU president, noted
. . .there were cases in which he and the ACLU agreed. They included rulings upholding flag burning and a 2004 opinion arguing that a U.S. citizen seized in Afghanistan in wartime could challenge his detention as an enemy combatant in U.S. courts.
Well, burning the flag, as compared to abortion rights, is a real life make-or-break kind of issue, isn’t it? The second, I have to admit is a step back from the brink of complete paternal authoritarianism.
Scalia finds Constitutional alliances for depersonalized or minimally human impacting issues fairly easily. But he’s unable to temper justice with mercy when issues impact, say, half the population (women), or a third of the population (minorities) of this country. And god forbid he should protect the civil liberties of all of us against the intrusion of government!
Ms. Strossen speaks for me when she says,
“I’m very distressed about your failure to find protections in the Constitution for the right of consenting individuals in their homes to decide what they see and read, and what type of sexual relations they have.
Unlike Scalia (thank god!) Ms. Strossen insists,
“There are some rights that are so fundamental that no majority can take them away from any minority, no matter how small or unpopular that minority might be.”
Count on Scalia to protect us peon-citizens from radicalism of that nature. He was one of the 5 in the 5-4 decision allowing police more leeway to enter private homes.