Posted on 06/27/2012 11:48:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Justice Antonin Scalia needs to resign from the Supreme Court.
He’d have a lot of things to do. He’s a fine public speaker and teacher. He’d be a heck of a columnist and blogger. But he really seems to aspire to being a politician — and that’s the problem.
So often, Scalia has chosen to ignore the obligation of a Supreme Court justice to be, and appear to be, impartial. He’s turned “judicial restraint” into an oxymoronic phrase. But what he did this week, when the court announced its decision on the Arizona immigration law, should be the end of the line.
Not content with issuing a fiery written dissent, Scalia offered a bench statement questioning President Obama’s decision to allow some immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children to stay. Obama’s move had nothing to do with the case in question. Scalia just wanted you to know where he stood.
“After this case was argued and while it was under consideration, the secretary of homeland security announced a program exempting from immigration enforcement some 1.4 million illegal immigrants,” Scalia said. “The president has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’ in light of Congress’s failure to pass the administration’s proposed revision of the immigration laws. Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of federal immigration law that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind.”
What boggles the mind is that Scalia thought it proper to jump into this political argument. And when he went on to a broader denunciation of federal policies, he sounded just like an Arizona Senate candidate.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sorry, I’m not understanding you. I’m talking about recusal from hearing a case, not from the correct decision IN a case. A judge whose impartiality might reasonably questioned, such as by his/her having previously publicly stated a personal opinion on the underlying issue, must self-recuse, e.g., Kagan’s email to Larry Tribe celebrating the passage of Obamacare.
The WaPo actually pays this monkey to write?
So-called "progressives," such as Dionne, use the tools of dissembling and mischaracterization in order to distort and attack. We must not fall for their methods, but expose and repel them.
Can’t say I would cry if certiant federal “justice” were knocked off.
Not that I am advocating or would advocate such an unlawful act. I simply don’t see their lives as more valuable than any other man(whom I do not know) live.
While there can be no question as to the enhanced danger they place themselves into in their frequent judgments having the effect of rendering injury not only to individuals but large segments of the American people.
I don’t feel that in itself entitles them to the expense of such special protection. Indeed it should be noted that I take similar issue in regard to the president on whom I am thoroughly convinced we are made to spend far too much money.
Were you making a pun or was that an honest mistake?
Nice quote; though I think the section number might be wrong, Google’s book section had it as 1914.
But aren't the comments that this guy is whining about precisely about the non-uniform application of such laws? And it's ridiculous to say that any statement made outlining a [political] opinion should result in the need to recuse on that topic.
You owe monkeys an appology. A monkey banging on a keyboard would have a better chance of having something interesting to read than a Dionne. How is that circulation doing?
Pray for America
I do wish sometimes that SCOTUS justices would go beyond merely saying things are unconstititional, and say what that implies: that they are illegitimate. The Court has no authority to make things be constitutional or unconstitutional. If the court is doing its job legitimately and it says something is constitutional, that something will be constitutional. Likewise if it is doing its job legitimately and it says something is unconstitutional. On the other hand, the notion that a Supreme Court declaration that something is unconstitutional necessarily implies that the thing actually is unconstitutional only holds if one assumes that the Supreme Court will always do its job legitimately; given the number of 5-4 decisions on what should clear-cut cases, such an assumption would seem dubious at best.
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