Scalia was an intellectual phony: Can we please stop calling him a brilliant jurist?

Legion Troll said:
Scalia espoused the doctrine of "originalism," which meant that in cases, he interpreted the Constitution by the "original public meaning" of the words written by the framers, as understood nearly 240 years ago.

That was, he believed, the only way to insulate the Constitution from the personal values of judges and the political winds of the day.

He often derided "nine unelected lawyers" usurping the popular will of the people by Court opinions that were the equivalent of legislative enactments.

He was a major force in Bush v. Gore's 5-4 majority opinion that stopped the Florida Supreme Court's ongoing order for a full state recount. In an utterly specious, brazenly-political opinion by the five Republicans on the Court, the recount was stopped and George W. Bush was "selected" as President by five unelected lawyers. When questioned in public about this decision, he replied injudiciously "get over it."

Scalia was a corporatist, as displayed by his vote in the Citizens United case in 2010 overruling precedent and giving corporations the power to spend money without dollar limitations to support or denounce candidates for public office. Justice Scalia was inclined, with important exceptions, to defer to executive power against civil liberties. He was also inimical to fuller voting rights and hostile to government regulation of business and allowing class actions by consumers and workers.

Leading conservative thinkers often took him to task.

Professor of law, Richard A. Epstein excoriated Justice Scalia's judicial activism, especially his hostility to taxpayers "standing" to sue the government and Congress "for overstepping their Constitutional authority." "Justice Scalia," concludes the University of Chicago scholar, "takes a blatantly internationalist position by reading into the Constitution limitations found neither in its text nor its basic structure, nor in the general judicial practice running deep in our history."

A more startling put-down from the celebrated conservative jurist and former academic colleague of Justice Scalia, Richard A. Posner, came in a lengthy critique of Scalia's 2012 book, Reading Law: the Interpretation of Legal Texts. Judge Posner's article was called "The Incoherence of Antonin Scalia."





http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/the-conundrums-of-justice_b_9276954.html
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:good4u:
 
PostmodernProphet said:
who is Paul Campos and why should we give a fuck what his opinion of Scalia is.....compared to Campos, Scalia WAS a brilliant jurist......and probably would have been a better journalist as well......
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You got me there. Paul Campos is a lawyer and we all know what the conventional wisdom is about lawyers. </sarcasm>
 
reason10 said:
Salon? Seriously?

And you wonder why everyone says that liberals are fucking idiots.
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Explain these.

1. Indeed Scalia simply ignored a rich historical record that reveals, among other things, that at the time the amendment was ratified, the federal government passed several laws granting special benefits to African-Americans, and only African-Americans.

2. ...the men who drafted and ratified the First Amendment would, it’s safe to say, been shocked out of their wits if someone had told them they were granting the same free speech rights to corporations they were giving to persons.

3. ...he was one of five justices who didn’t bother to come up with something resembling a coherent legal argument for intervening in Florida’s electoral process. The judges making up that majority did so while trampling on the precise legal principles Justice Scalia, in particular, claimed to hold so dear: judicial restraint, originalist interpretation, and respect for states’ rights.
 
anatta said:
Corporations are not able to claim constitutional protections that would not otherwise be available to persons acting as a group.
"corporations are people" is such a dishonest dumbed down meme -it's despicable. The OP is almost pure trash not worth time to critique
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Wouldn't Scalia say everybody has a right to free speech, including this author?
 
Lovebug said:
Most of us render judgment based on ideology, something Scalia stood up against. That alone made him a great Scotus. He was brilliant in his own right, something most can only aspire to be. I'll leave it at that.
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maybe you never heard him talk about black people
 
giving a corporation personal rights is NOT following the founders principles


scalia had no set morals
 
christiefan915 said:
You got me there. Paul Campos is a lawyer and we all know what the conventional wisdom is about lawyers. </sarcasm>
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especially liberal lawyers.....in short, Campos bases his conclusions about legal brilliance on whether or not he agrees with Scalia's well thought out and articulated beliefs about textualism.......if Campos, like most liberal lawyers - especially those who have never even argue a case before the Supreme Court, have never spoken with Scalia, probably have never taken the time to read his book "Reading Law", and quite frankly wouldn't even be able to get an appointment to meet him in his office - wants a Constitution that is merely a placeholder for whatever the liberal justice wants to turn the law into, he's never likely to like Scalia's beliefs regarding the law.......

Doesn't change the fact Scalia is a brilliant jurist......doesn't change the fact Campos doesn't even know what a brilliant jurist should look like......just underscores the failure of your thread.....

by the way.....this is not shooting the messenger......this is taking the messengers body, grinding into hamburger and using it to throw a steak tatar party at Salon.......
 
christiefan915 said:
Explain these.

1. Indeed Scalia simply ignored a rich historical record that reveals, among other things, that at the time the amendment was ratified, the federal government passed several laws granting special benefits to African-Americans, and only African-Americans.

2. ...the men who drafted and ratified the First Amendment would, it’s safe to say, been shocked out of their wits if someone had told them they were granting the same free speech rights to corporations they were giving to persons.

3. ...he was one of five justices who didn’t bother to come up with something resembling a coherent legal argument for intervening in Florida’s electoral process. The judges making up that majority did so while trampling on the precise legal principles Justice Scalia, in particular, claimed to hold so dear: judicial restraint, originalist interpretation, and respect for states’ rights.
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the answer to all three is this......when the legal entity of a "corporation" was approved by the legislatures of the various states (now, all) that approved them, it was in fact approved as a legal entity.....there are in fact particular things which a legal entity may legally do.....
 
PostmodernProphet said:
especially liberal lawyers.....in short, Campos bases his conclusions about legal brilliance on whether or not he agrees with Scalia's well thought out and articulated beliefs about textualism.......if Campos, like most liberal lawyers - especially those who have never even argue a case before the Supreme Court, have never spoken with Scalia, probably have never taken the time to read his book "Reading Law", and quite frankly wouldn't even be able to get an appointment to meet him in his office - wants a Constitution that is merely a placeholder for whatever the liberal justice wants to turn the law into, he's never likely to like Scalia's beliefs regarding the law.......

Doesn't change the fact Scalia is a brilliant jurist......doesn't change the fact Campos doesn't even know what a brilliant jurist should look like......just underscores the failure of your thread.....

by the way.....this is not shooting the messenger......this is taking the messengers body, grinding into hamburger and using it to throw a steak tatar party at Salon.......
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he lied about being a strict constructionist when it suited his racist ideals
 
he flopped like a fish on the deck



he had no set morals



he denied FACTS to retain his ideals of thinking himself superior to others


just like you
 
"Given that those principles are and always have been controversial among American judges, lawyers, and politicians, insisting that they ought to control judicial interpretation as a matter of definition makes about as much sense as arguing for the desirability of, say, a particular income tax rate by claiming that the advocate’s preferred rate simply is the “true” rate (in other words it’s a nonsensical argument on its face)."


this


he was just what this person says




you don't understand what is being said
 
PostmodernProphet said:
especially liberal lawyers.....in short, Campos bases his conclusions about legal brilliance on whether or not he agrees with Scalia's well thought out and articulated beliefs about textualism.......if Campos, like most liberal lawyers - especially those who have never even argue a case before the Supreme Court, have never spoken with Scalia, probably have never taken the time to read his book "Reading Law", and quite frankly wouldn't even be able to get an appointment to meet him in his office - wants a Constitution that is merely a placeholder for whatever the liberal justice wants to turn the law into, he's never likely to like Scalia's beliefs regarding the law.......

Doesn't change the fact Scalia is a brilliant jurist......doesn't change the fact Campos doesn't even know what a brilliant jurist should look like......just underscores the failure of your thread.....

by the way.....this is not shooting the messenger......this is taking the messengers body, grinding into hamburger and using it to throw a steak tatar party at Salon.......
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"Over and over during Scalia’s three decades on the Supreme Court, if one of his cherished interpretive principles got in the way of his political preferences, that principle got thrown overboard in a New York minute."

Your argument sucks. Unless YOU argued a case in front of SCOTUS, talked to Scalia or met him, your opinions are no different from the author's. You are doing exactly what the author is saying Scalia did, waffling because you don't like what was written. You're stooping to ad homs just like Scalia did in some of his dissents. And you are too dumb to understand how foolish you appear for doing so.
 
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