The Trouble With Scalia

Coach is Right ^ | 2/19/16 | Michael D. Shaw

[Oldpuppymax]

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is being praised as a conservative icon, brilliant writer, and all around great guy. Also included in the obituaries are descriptions of his friendship with his fellow justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This relationship went well beyond mere collegiality. In fact, they saw each other socially quite frequently, partied together, and took vacations together.

During a joint appearance with the woman he also has called his “best buddy” on the bench, Scalia said, “Why don’t you call us the odd couple?”

“What’s not to like?” Scalia joked at an event hosted by the Smithsonian Associates. “Except her views on the law, of course.”

So, here’s the problem: These two justices disagreed on virtually everything, from abortion and gun control, to gay marriage, capital punishment, and Obamacare. He was a devout Catholic, and she is a secular Jew. Surely, one can be cordial and professional with a person who holds opposite positions on essentially every major political, social, and cultural issue—but why go out of your way to hang out with such an individual?

What would Scalia have to suppress to preferentially spend lots of time with Ginsburg? Would YOU choose to socialize with someone who disagrees with you on so much, even if you both might like the same classical music?

And, then it came to me. For all his brilliant opinions, and all of his conservative bona fides, Antonin Scalia must have viewed being a Supreme Court justice as his day job...

[dirtboy]

A flea nibbling on Scalia’s dead toe.

[Mrs. Don-o]

So what???

(Thumps forehead).

[knarf]

I gott’a admit Coach ... you pose an interesting situation.

[woweeitsme]

What a waste of time that article was.

[cpdiii]

We wonder then, was Scalia truly able to separate work from his personal life, or was he actually an empty shell, posing as a happy Renaissance Man? Where did he hide the passion for his legal theories after hours?

I call BRAVO SIERRA on this one. Scalia's work in the court was 100% consistent with strict interpretation of The Constitution. I have a couple of dear friends that are liberal. I hate their political positions but am quite fond of them.

[bigdaddy45]

“If you can’t disagree ardently with your colleagues about some issues of law and yet personally still be friends, get another job, for Pete’s sake.” That is a Scalia quote.

Yes, it was his day job. If you are so consumed by idealogical leanings that you can’t maintain a friendship with someone who you otherwise get along with....what would that say about you? It would prove you to be a fanatic.

To quote Sir Winston: “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” Is that the kind of person you want on the Supreme Court?

[cpdiii]

I forgot to add that in my misspent youth in the 70s and 80s liberal women were much easier to get into bed, however due to Scalia’s and Ginsberg's age, I doubt greatly this is or was ever a factor. I think both enjoyed the company of a brilliant mind despite their conflicting constitutional beliefs.

[daniel1212]

Scalia Dissent on "gay marriage": Excerpts of sounder reasoning (emp. mine). When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so... Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its “reasoned judgment,” thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect.13 That is so because “[t]he generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its..dimensions . . . . But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that... every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003 They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds— minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly— could not. They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their “reasoned judgment.” These Justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago,21 cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry . And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution. The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic. It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the Court to do so.... Rights, we are told, can “rise . . . from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.”24 (Huh? How can a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives [whatever that means] define [whatever that means] an urgent liberty [never mind], give birth to a right? And we are told that, “[i]n any particular case,” either the Equal Protection or Due Process Clause “may be thought to capture the essence of [a] right in a more accurate and comprehensive way,” than the other, “even as the two Clauses may converge in the identification and definition of the right.”25 (What say? What possible “essence” does substantive due process “capture” in an “accurate and comprehensive way”? It stands for nothing whatever, except those freedoms and entitlements that this Court really likes.. .) The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie. ..The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational popphilosophy; it demands them in the law. The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis. * * * Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall. The Judiciary is the “least dangerous” of the federal branches because it has “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm” and the States, “even for the efficacy of its judgments.”26 With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence. - Antonin Scalia; http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf

[Old Retired Army Guy]

I judge Scalia by his positions on the court. Not his social friendships. To me, he was a Conservative Icon. To denigrate him because he had liberal friends is moronic.

[grania]

Agree it was his day job, and everyone who knows what they're talking about it is saying the friendship didn't affect Scalia's judgement.

But I have to ask: It's a day job, and one of the most important ones there is. Should Supreme Court judges be socializing with each other and with those connected to DC? The sewer is so incestuous, that I'm not sure judges being part of the social goings on there can help but cloud their perspective.

[Theodore R.]

I suspect Scalia deferred to Ginsburg on the court far more than she ever did to him, which was probably zero times.

[bigdaddy45]

I prefer human beings on the Supreme Court. People who can get along with and have relationships with other people. Not fanatics and zealots who are so obsessive and cut off from the real world that they are unable to function as normal adults.

[Boogieman]

Is “Coach” ever right?

[grania]

I don’t disagree with you. I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if their social contacts were mostly outside of the DC inner circle, to keep them grounded in the real world outside of DC.

[cornfedcowboy]

Maybe Scalia viewed his life as an outreach program to compassless (is that a word) scholars. It is OK to be blazing right wing conservative and have liberal friends. Ginsburg is a liberal but not an idiotic 99% type.
Opposites do attract in some ways.

[bigdaddy45]

Justices work with another another. Should they not socialize as well? I feel sorry for someone who is so clouded by ideology that they segment friends based on political leanings.

[libbylu]

Scalia was pro constitution no matter which side it fell. One would think the man could be buried before being smeared.

[Migraine]

We have a saying in Christian apologetics (whether arguing for a particular doctrine within the faith, or arguing against atheism itself): know the other guy’s position better than he does. That’s what I think Scalia saw in Ruthie — a fairly gullible old gal who would divulge to him the rationales that most liberals normally hold very close to the vest. Smart man, and a cordial gentleman to boot.

[rcofdayton]

Yes and yet even so, why have a friend who is the enemy of the Constitution?