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To: Do not dub me shapka broham
"Antonin Scalia has been described with many different adjectives-not all of them necessarily flattering-but "meek" has never been one of them."

Antonin Scalia has regularly and rather easily intellectually demolished the arguments of the liberal and "swing" justices, but how many times has he changed their minds, won them over to his way of thinking on a given case?

A little meekness might go a long way on a court that AT BEST will now have only four conservatives on it.
103 posted on 10/06/2005 9:15:33 PM PDT by FredTownWard
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To: FredTownWard
This is a popular-but completely unconvincing-argument.

Scalia is brilliant...ooh, but so divisive!

The fact of the matter is that you are not going to change the minds of someone who's spent the better part of his or her life constructing an elaborate perspective-with regard to interpretation of Constitutional, common and case law-to reflect your opinion more closely, no matter what polemical skills you possess.

The Supreme Court is not a forensics society, where the erudition or incisive reasoning of one member entitles him or her to more authority than the vapidity of another.

If this were the case, then Antonin Scalia's opinion would carry twenty times more weight-at the very least-than that of the doltish Stephen Breyer.

Unfortunately, that's not the reality we're presented with.

We should-and I believe that we have-convince the American public of the rightness of our views, but the only way of enacting them on a national level is by replacing-not convincing-Supreme Court justices with intractable anti or extra-constitional bents.

In any case, the idea that Miers-through either her blandness or collegiality-will persuade the Court's other members to move in the direction of Scalia or Thomas-presuming of course that she is even on their side in the first place-has not been born out by history.

Case in point, the dreadful tenure of Justice Burger.

113 posted on 10/06/2005 9:42:33 PM PDT by Do not dub me shapka broham ("I'm okay with being unimpressive. It helps me sleep better.")
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