Associated Press
Jurists are generally supposed to struggle with complex legal issues, weighing the subtleties and nuances of the law and legal history, and using their best judgment to reach sound conclusions to tough calls.
But for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, tough legal questions aren't difficult to answer at all (thanks to reader R.S. for the tip).
Scalia calls himself a "textualist" and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak in Washington the other day, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them. [...]
"The death penalty? Give me a break. It's easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state," Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute.
Mary Elizabeth Williams added, "It takes a special kind of man to shrug off challenges to death penalty and abortion restrictions with nary a care in the world about how his interpretations of text might affect real human lives, and to use the phrase 'homosexual sodomy' in 2012."
Quite right. The ease with which Scalia these draws conclusions is striking, but not surprising. In his mind, if gay people were legally prohibited from having sex two centuries ago, and the right to privacy is a sham, then there's no reason for the Supreme Court to protect those Americans' civil liberties against state intrusion now.
And who's Antonin Scalia? He's the right-wing jurist who, just this week, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) praised as his "model Supreme Court justice."
What's more, if you go to Mitt Romney's website right now, it tells voters, "As president, Mitt will nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito."
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sickening. he should be removed from the court as his prejudice is unconstitutional
Why doesn't he apply this across the board? The authors of the Bill of Rights did not envision semi-automatic assault rifles when they wrote the second amendment. "Arms" at that time were only muskets - so the second amendment shouldn't apply to any weaponry not in existence at the time. And as for a free press - it was print only back then - so freedom of the press, as well as freedom of speech shouldn't apply to broadcast and internet media. So lets apply the constitution as written and only to the world exactly as envisioned by the original authors.
When it suits a conservative - they will read all kinds of things into the constitution.
I have no idea where this court is going,But ever since the scandal with justice Thomas, Is been ruling with shocking results. We all know .. Is not easy for these justice times are changing new laws are being pass mostly to prevent our citizens the freedom our constitution and our civil liberty gives every American. But this man has reach the Ronald Reagan stage and we all know they are trying hard to keep it from leaking out. But really all you have to do is listen to him and you will see.. Scallia has miss his boat.
Justice Antonin Scalia,
By your logic, we should allow slavery, prohibit interracial marriage and all forms of discrimination should totally legal. Because it was legal for many, many years.