Scalia at His Best

I love watching Justice Scalia speak; I think that he is by far the most articulate of the Justices on the Supreme Court, and even when I disagree with him, I at least know exactly how he is arriving at the decisions that he makes.

Tonight, in a debate with Nadine Strossen, the President of the American Civil Liberties Union, Scalia was at his best. He clearly and concisely laid out the reasons for his decisions, and while this wasn't a "debate" by any stretch of the imagination, Scalia would have won if it had been.

I can't do justice (no pun intended) to Scalia's points, and I encourage everyone to head to C-SPAN and watch this thing as soon as possible. But the most devestating and accurate point that Scalia threw down was this:

When challenged about whether Brown v. Board of Education (the opinion that brought an end to legalized segregation in schools) was correctly decided, Scalia stood his ground and said no. But he went further, and herein lies the genius of his argument; Scalia stated quite clearly that the social benefits of Brown were extremely positive, but that that didn't prove anything. Even a Court that was applying a wishy-washy version of the law could produce some truly positive and beneficial things. That didn't make their actions or reasoning correct, and it didn't mean that their actions were contemplated by the Constitution. That's exceedingly hard to rebut.

Scalia also rejected the label of strict constructionist, because he is willing to interpret the Constitution when it is the prudent thing to do. In other words, Scalia will look to the legislative intent to define what the meaning of Constitutional (or statutory) text means, not to the dictionary. He doesn't necessarily require the same meaning for the same words in different clauses; context, and history, matter. He would define himself as an originalist rather than a strict constructionist.

Scalia makes sense, and right now my head hurts because I'm having a hard time resisting the pull of Nino. Now, if only he'd be a little more polite when on the bench (or when writing opinions).