Watching Scalia Eviscerate a Kennedy

The American Thinker ^ | March 5, 2005 | Christopher Schweikert

[Kitten Festival]

Even his most ardent opponents are wont to acknowledge Justice Antonin Scalia's intellectual brilliance. If you’ve never watched his devastating fire handily blasting the drunken jurisprudence of postmodernism, you owe yourself a read some evening. It’s an irreverence that arouses the highest form of wrath: that of a left that has been not only defied, but mocked. His specialty is dismembering an opponent with his own weapon. He does it calmly and with a deftness that immobilizes any liberal mind that has been dealt such a terrifying dose of simplicity. Our $164,000 a year is buying us a lot.

Contrary to the popular belief perpetuated by members of my verbose profession, law is nowhere near as complicated as we and our invoices try to make it seem. Have you ever attempted to read a long court decision and wondered what in the world they were trying to get at? If you’re lucky enough to find Justice Antonin Scalia in the minority—in which case the majority is unlucky enough to find him there, too, wielding a pen that drips with mercilessly stinging wit—you’ve got an easy job. Just read the Scalia dissent, and you’ll learn what the case is all about. (Click here for a list of some Scalia dissents.)

[Kitten Festival]

Judge Scalia makes mincemeat of all these clown judges who make up the law as they go along. A very good read.

[Enterprise]

“evolving standards of decency,” whatever they are."

With the "evolution" of prison and street gangs, society began to understand that members of these gangs had little compunction againt murder, and that increasingly, it was juvenile members of these gangs who were carrying out "planned" killings. Society's "evolution" of understanding was that a whole group of individuals were in effect, given a pass to kill, and they had no fear of the ultimate consequence society uses to punish and deter adults. Society's view "evolved" to the understanding that juveniles could be as much, if not more so, violent than adults and that many of them fully comprehended the nature of their actions. Now, frighteningly, we find ourselves back at the point where juveniles can pre-plan and carry out horrific murders on any given scale. And once again, it must be noted that these are fertile grounds for terror organizations to supply money and firepower. The practical effect of this ruling is that thousands of citizens are going to be murdered by domestic and foreign juveniles. If there ever was a "when in the course of human events" moment folks, this is it.

[P_A_I]

From Scalia's dissent:

" -- Foreign sources are cited today, not to underscore our "fidelity" to the Constitution, our "pride in its origins," and "our own [American] heritage." To the contrary, they are cited to set aside the centuries-old American practice--a practice still engaged in by a large majority of the relevant States--of letting a jury of 12 citizens decide whether, in the particular case, youth should be the basis for withholding the death penalty. -- "

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Note that Scalia is careful to say that States can 'let' juries decide such issues, - that it is a "practice", not a right, that a fully informed, impartial jury make such decisions, as per the 6th Amendment.

Its unfortunate that the USSC doesn't realize that by establishing that there is an individual right to a trial by a jury informed of both facts & constitutional law, -- most if not all of the controversial issues of the day could be decided by a jury of 12 citizens establishing whether, in the particular case at hand, justice is being done.