I completely agree with Justice Scalia here; people mix politics and the interpretation of the law far too often.

The Constitution was MEANT to be changed by elected representatives serving finite terms, not by five life-tenured judges. Judges should interpret the law AS IT IS WRITTEN and leave the social justice to the Congress.

@NunYa953

6 жыл бұрын

CountArtha In principle this comment makes sense but in practice it's actually the dumbest opinion I've ever read. Have a nice day.

Incredibly intelligent and articulate man. It will be very a sad day when he eventually does retire.

@connollybob9

8 жыл бұрын

+bob2000and10 Under no circumstances must another progressive nutjob be appointed to the Supreme Court by our communist-in-chief. Donald Trump '2016, and may he appoint a fine replacement for Justice Scalia.

@IbelieveinJesusAmen

7 жыл бұрын

You set the bar low eh?

@SkillUpMobileGaming

6 жыл бұрын

+DPRobertz *Your prediction was 100% CORRECT.* >>> *TRUMP 2020*

@jimkaspar8320

6 жыл бұрын

DPRobertz - and now to the second appointment. Hopefully he will appoint 4 throughout his 2 terms.

Scalia is right. You can’t judge a judge unless you know what he or she is doing.

Thank you for posting this, CSPAN.

"I am the law." - Justice Scalia, quoting Judge Dredd in 2008

Really love this man

Well said

I don't understand the reason people would disagree with this. What would be the rationale in disagreeing with what he said?

@TejanoTigre

5 жыл бұрын

his reasoning here is sound, what some people take issue with is that at times it seems as though his judicial opinions reflect an adherence to a policy view when it seems precedence would go the other way

@hyperseauton Be careful what you wish for. For every activist judge who changes the law "for the better," there's another who will change it for the worse.

Agreed.

can we see more of this somewhere

brilliant man, even if I don't agree with him a few times

The difference between Plessy and Brown is exactly what you said from Holmes quote: experience. What is "equal"? It was not obvious at first. But by the 50's it was clear that "separate but equal" was not equal. So, the law changed. The system worked. Many originalists see it this way.

@iansquared3 hmmm I remember having the same feeling

@Strega222 Of course he does, and there have been many instances when J. Scalia, either writing for the majority, concurring, or in dissent, has expressed his opinion that a law at issue is unconstitutional. A law can be distasteful and yet pass constitutional muster...

Love this!

I don't get your point on this one. Who said we need and amd to clarify the 8th amd? The text is vague and open to different interpretations. It's the Court's job to interpret it. They've adopted a "living constitution" approach to it, which Scalia rejects, but that doesn't mean he's wrong; he just failed to persuade a majority of the other justices.

The fact that some parts of the Bill of Rights (like the 1st Amendment, but not yet the 2nd) apply to the States is itself the product of liberal judicial activism. Read the text of the Amendments ("CONGRESS shall pass no law..."). The States originally ratified the Bill of Rights assuming that they would only apply to the fed govt! It wasn't until the activist liberal SC judges "incorporated" those Amendments through the 14th Amendment's "due process" clause that States were bound by them.

His words apply far beyond courts. It's very easy to be an armchair philosopher and arrogantly reject or support a one-line holding announced on CNN or wherever. It's a little more challenging to actually exert your mind to understand the complex reasoning behind it all.

@IbelieveinJesusAmen

7 жыл бұрын

FIVE IRON Exert your BRAIN...and don't MIND replying. GTFOH.

@joejohnson043 As a matter of fact, the States do not need to respect the Bill of Rights for the reason you stated. For the better part of our Republic, Amendments 1 - 8 were protections against the abuses of the Federal Government only. The States were free (many did) to write the protections into their own Constitutions, but prior to selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights, there was no mandate that the First 8 Amendments be protected on a State level. 5,7, and 8 still not incorporated.

@NunYa953

6 жыл бұрын

Mcommander23 I have read this comment 4 times and I have come to the conclusion that I have lost some intelligence in doing so.

@joejohnson043 I must point out that your statement is incorrect. The Bill of Rights does not automatically apply to the states. This is handled under the doctrine of incorporation. Chicago lost its gun ban case because the Supreme Court determined that the "right to bear arms" is sufficiently fundamental such that the states must respect that right as well as the feds. You are wrong to say that the states, categorically, must respect the B of Rts. See the 3rd amendment & excessive fines clause

@DStrike0083 No. Interpreting it the way you want is what most judges do and that's why there are screwy judgements that all contradict each other floating around. The whole premise of law is that similar cases should be decided in similar ways through the application of legal principles. In reality, it all depends on your judge. Some judges convict everybody. Some judges hardly convict anybody at all. Different people get treated differently depending on their judges. That is injustice.

Who wins "Under the law the people have adopted." You can "adopt" common law or maritime law. In common law the people most likely win, in maritime law the government mostly wins. Look into Gordon Hall, Dean Clifford and Tim Turner on You Tube and you will see more truth in Chief Justice Scalia's words. The court system is beautiful. It is perfect. You just need to know what to do and how to do it. Those three wise men will help.

i'm not a scalia fan, but he actually makes a good point here.

@CfuenmayorJr123 try to imagine a court using their 'living law' doctrine to make laws completely against what you view as right and decent. Would you still like their activism? What is your recourse? Congress, passing a law to overturn judges interpreting on their own whim? But then they declare those new laws don't apply. At what point do we need a legislature? We would just have a big fat civil war over who gets to appoint judges, and the winner can appoint our oligarchs for life....

@doowoplover534 your post is off by 8 years. You should be able to see by now that we didn't actually get any oil profits, though we should have. They haven't even repaid a dime that we spent on those wars, and have awarded the best oil contracts to our enemy/competitors.

End software patents, please? Can you? It'd be most helpful for all if you could :-)

@djpelagic just because something hasn't been implemented in all the court opinions yet doesn't mean I'm wrong. It is self evident that your protections as an American under the Bill of Rights, should protect you in the case of a tyrannical State (even though its usually the other way around). Have you heard the fed is suing Arizona because they want to arrest illegal aliens crossing their border? How is it THAT overreaches the FED, but a right guaranteed in the BILL OF RIGHTS does not?

1. true it is; no doubt about that. but some things are quite clear still. 2. that does NOT follow from number one. nowhere did the framers ever specify that the constitution (which is a law) a was meant to change) was meant to change its answers according to the times even though it is vague. 3. this is a moral statement and it has nothing to do with procedural law (the enforcing of already adopted laws).

Being fateful to what the people have decided? Congresses approval rating since 1972 has spent more time below 30% then above it and only a handful of times has it been above 50%.

Brewing BRUUUU WIN

@CfuenmayorJr123 The Constitution gave the Supreme Court the power of judicial review. Art. III's "the judicial power" encompasses the power of judicial review. What does vagueness have to do with whether laws are living or static? Contracts are vague, so we interpret them differently than at the time they were made? Wills are interpreted differently than what the testator intends? Legislation doesn't mean what it meant at the time of enactment? Vagueness is carte blanche for lawlessness?

The irony of the "originalist" methodology is that it fails it own historical inquiry; the Framers DID intend for the Constitution to change. Evidence? Edmund Randolph's statement at the Philadelphia Convention Committee of Detail (1787): "In the draught of a fundamental constitution... [we ought to] insert essential principles only; lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable, which ought to be accommodated to times and events."

@joaobaptista5307

3 жыл бұрын

That's why there's an ammendment process reserved to the legislature.

The law should be reasonable, rationally justifiable in a free and democratic society.

I’m here after linn wood said Hillary kill him

its not the job of judges to decide what is good law and what is bad law. in the system the people agreed to, the legislature makes those decisions, not the court. unless you think having a law degree somehow means that you know more about morality and should be able to make these decisions for society.

Here's another example of our "living constitution." The Court has held that the meaning of "cruel and unusual punishment" changes with our society's "evolving standards of decency." (Trop v. Dulles). So while the Founding Fathers executed teenagers & children, executed the mentally retarded, and executed people for rape (or other crimes lesser than murder), our living constitution prohibits those kinds of executions. Should we have needed a constitutional amendment to make that clear? No.

Has he ever chosen to ignore those amendments when deciding a case? Because that's all that really matters.

It is the job of judges to differentiate good law from bad, and, according to the Framers, judges ARE supposed to "know more about morality" than others. From Federalist # 78: "[The Law] ...must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge... Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges... [and fewer still] who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge."

The Supreme Court does take the political power of certain groups into account in analyzing the constitutionality of State and Congressional legislation under the Equal Protection clause. Where "prejudice against discrete and insular minorities" - racial minorities, religious minorities, women, or, more controversially, gays & lesbians - motivate some legislation, the Supreme Court "may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry." - Footnote 4, US v. Carolene Products (1938)

Mr. inJustice Scalie, together with his fellow inJustices: Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy have turned the U.S. Supreme Court into ONE BIG JOKE!

Given the shades of gray, judges DO have the power to "make" better law. Supreme Court Justices have "made law" in interpreting what "due process" means, or what constitutes an "unreasonable search or seizure" or "cruel and unusual punishment." Common law judges "made law" going back centuries before the United States was even founded. Judges are not robots or baseball umpires. As Oliver Wendell Holmes famously observed, "the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."

What you just described is not "originalism." The idea that the meaning of the world "equal" can change over time is the essence of a living constitution, the exact opposite of a rigid adherence to "original intent." It is clear, by the way, that the Framers of the 14th A. did NOT intend to desegregate public schools. Even Northern schools in the 1860s were segregated. Many of the Justices were going to uphold segregation b/c of that clear "original intent" before they finally ignored it.

I disagree, somewhat, with Justice Scalia's view about following the law even if the results are absurd. That is not justice. Following black letter law can result in horrendous miscarriages of justice!

This man's jowls should be surgically removed and displayed at the Smithsonian.

"Under (the) Law"? Scalia admitted to know these words which were part of "Equal Justice Under Law" , the engraving which are hung above the entrance to SCOTUS building. All pass under it. To derive his "Under the Law" conclusion that the 14th Amendment did not mean to use for the Equal Protection of Gay people is ridiculous. If Scalia's original interpretations of the Constitution would produce Unequal treatment of the citizens of the USA,something seriously wrong with his mind. If all the nine justices are like Scalia, this sign of "Equal Justice Under Law" should be replaced by "Justice Under Law" without the word Equal. Does Justice imply Equal(lity) ? I wonder. Scalia may have different idea about "Equal Justice". I think in his mind-his peculiar inner workings and ways of thinking of deriving the meaning and intents of the US Constitution are means to derive Equal Justice. To the rest of us, Equal Justice means All are protected Equally Under the Law.

@bduhe219

8 жыл бұрын

+UpNfamish2 that's because most of the conservative judges on the court, do not understand applied law. instead they rely on original intent, and if something did not apply or exist at the time, over 200 years ago, than it is null and void when coming to a decision. that to me, is such a lazy way to decide cases. a living constitution is to be applied today, by the template set by the framers. you have to do your homework, and read things into a decision to apply it correctly to today's cases. they are simply lazy judges, who are still mentally in the 18th century.

@UpNfamish2

8 жыл бұрын

+bduhe219 Scalia is a typical first generation American born from non-English immigrant parents. His writings are written in English words, but their meanings are so Un-English like and thus, the "Justice" derived by him is totally non-sense to normal people. The word "Equal" same to All.

@UpNfamish2

8 жыл бұрын

DPRobertz​: violations of 14 n 5 "due process of laws" must not be happening in the USA.

@johnisaacfelipe6357

6 жыл бұрын

UpNfamish2 lols, substantive due process is the most idiotic notion to ever have the grace of propagation. If you want the constitution to inplicit remove the ability of legislatures to make law regarding homoxsexual marraige, there's a way for that, its called article 5 of the constitution, also known as the ammendment clause.

@joejohnson043 I must point out that your statement is incorrect. The Bill of Rights does not automatically apply to the states. This is handled under the doctrine of incorporation. Chicago lost its gun ban case because the Supreme Court determined that the "right to bear arms" is sufficiently fundamental such that the states must respect that right as well as the feds. You are wrong to say that the states, categorically, must respect the B of Rts. See the 3rd amendment & excessive fines clause