USSC Justice Scalia Dead at 79

[Claudius]

Citizen's United?

He had no problem inserting his opinions over the legislature in support of his ideological views.

Do you have any proof of your claim?

He provided a detailed explanation as to why he joined the majority, it in no way has anything to do with "the rich". While the ruling may benefit the rich that is an irrelevant point, what matters is the logic behind his ruling.

Also I like how you pick one case from many years back to support your case. If he really only ruled in favor of the rich and "that was all he considered" then there surely must be a long trail and legally dubious arguments made by Scalia in order to support his "rich" masters.

[136 or 142]

He provided a detailed explanation as to why he joined the majority, it in no way has anything to do with "the rich". While the ruling may benefit the rich that is an irrelevant point, what matters is the logic behind his ruling.

Also I like how you pick one case from many years back to support your case. If he really only ruled in favor of the rich and "that was all he considered" then there surely must be a long trail and legally dubious arguments made by Scalia in order to support his "rich" masters.

Citizen's United was from many years back?

I really don't care how he rationalized his vote and to say Citizen's United 'may benefit the rich' is being deliberately obtuse.

It was also easily his most significant vote where he overruled a legislature, which kind of contradicts what you previously wrote.

I agree that my comment that his sole concern was to help the rich and hurt the poor was an oversimplification, his sole motivation was a wide range of standard far right wing positions (hating gay people, no separation of [right wing] church and state) and if he claimed to be doing so to favor the elected legislature over the unelected judges then he'd write that.

[ge30542]

Do you actually have proof of this claim? Because if you have actually read his dissents, interviews, and other writings it's pretty hard to support your claim. 

His stance in a nutshell most of the time was, "This issue shouldn't be decided by the court, this is an issue for the legislative to figure out."

Claudius, "progressives" are confused by facts.

[GuerrillaUnReal]

Well your right to own a gun in this country just died with Scalia.

[albrecht]

Apparently if Congress stops sitting, Obama if required could make a recess appointment to the Supreme Court until the end of his term.  I understand it doesn't take much to keep Congress in session to prevent that, but it would be nice to maybe keep a Rethuglic from the campaign trail.

I wonder if he could appoint himself! A real 'unitary executive' far surpassing even that Bush etc theory that this character Obama, or whatever name he is using this decade, expanded. Justice Soetoro! Needs to happen.

[136 or 142]

Claudius, "progressives" are confused by facts.

There were no facts in Claudius' post, just one or two claims.  "Conservatives" are confused by such things as what is a fact, what is a claim and what is an opinion.

From RationalWiki: Scalia considered himself a textualist and a Constitutional originalist, a rather meaningless term. "Textualism" means he interpreted laws by their plain meaning. For example, if there was a law on sex crimes and it mentions "forcible rope," he would've viewed this obvious error as referring to tying people up, not nonconsensual sex.[5] His originalist view was that he, and only he, knows exactly what James Madison meant (though Scalia was proven to not know what Antonin Scalia meant[2]). In many instances it is fairly cut-and-dried, such as his support for the constitutionality of the death penalty on the grounds that the Framers would never have thought of it as cruel and unusual. However, given that they all died around 150-200 years before the invention of the Internet, it is unknown exactly how he is able to discern their opinions on matters such as internet security. He believed that the Fourteenth Amendment only applies to... recounts in Florida, that axes shouldn't be carried in public but rocket launchers might be permissible,[6] and the Eighth Amendment prevented forcing him to read a 2700-page health care bill, but not torture.
In reality though, he was just a cultural warrior dressed in a robe, and he is willing to abandon his supposed originalism so long as it serves his ideological agenda.

Anybody who wants to read the links for themselves should go here: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Antonin_Scalia

[albrecht]

Well your right to own a gun in this country just died with Scalia.

Yep. Buy 'em while you can and stock up on ammo and reloading supplies. The Obama Stimulus has already made stuff scarce and expensive, about the only industry besides safes, precious metals, off-shoring, and expatriation, this character Obama, or whatever name he is using this decade, has had success in 'stimulating.'

[FearBoysWithBugs]

But I will never forgive him for his position on money and speech. I will always remember the connections to money he had. He wasn't a good supreme court justice.

He was a very good Justice in all the technical respects, and certainly the most entertaining Justice in memory.  He was a formidable and productive representative of the Conservative viewpoint.

[Claudius]

Citizen's United was from many years back?

I really don't care how he rationalized his vote and to say Citizen's United 'may benefit the rich' is being deliberately obtuse.

It was also easily his most significant vote where he overruled a legislature, which kind of contradicts what you previously wrote.

I agree that my comment that his sole concern was to help the rich and hurt the poor was an oversimplification, his sole motivation was a wide range of standard far right wing positions (hating gay people, no separation of [right wing] church and state) and if he claimed to be doing so to favor the elected legislature over the unelected judges then he'd write that.

Yes, it was 6 years ago. Not ancient history, but it's clear that you have no real knowledge of the Court, or of Scalia himself. You have one case which you present. And you use that one because everyone knows about that case.

I wasn't aware that right-wing people were in favor of flag burning? He wasn't ruling to favor anyone, not the judges, not the legislature, he simply viewed the constitution in its rawest form. I don't agree with him on many (if not almost all) of his rulings, but if you read what he wrote (and you were able to be objective) you would see that he was a judicial genius. His explanations are simply awesome. Yet I don't agree with them.

But I can be objective.

[Claudius]

There were no facts in Claudius' post, just one or two claims.  "Conservatives" are confused by such things as what is a fact, what is a claim and what is an opinion.

From RationalWiki: Scalia considered himself a textualist and a Constitutional originalist, a rather meaningless term. "Textualism" means he interpreted laws by their plain meaning. For example, if there was a law on sex crimes and it mentions "forcible rope," he would've viewed this obvious error as referring to tying people up, not nonconsensual sex.[5] His originalist view was that he, and only he, knows exactly what James Madison meant (though Scalia was proven to not know what Antonin Scalia meant[2]). In many instances it is fairly cut-and-dried, such as his support for the constitutionality of the death penalty on the grounds that the Framers would never have thought of it as cruel and unusual. However, given that they all died around 150-200 years before the invention of the Internet, it is unknown exactly how he is able to discern their opinions on matters such as internet security. He believed that the Fourteenth Amendment only applies to... recounts in Florida, that axes shouldn't be carried in public but rocket launchers might be permissible,[6] and the Eighth Amendment prevented forcing him to read a 2700-page health care bill, but not torture.
In reality though, he was just a cultural warrior dressed in a robe, and he is willing to abandon his supposed originalism so long as it serves his ideological agenda.

Anybody who wants to read the links for themselves should go here: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Antonin_Scalia

Quoting a source like Rational Wiki is not evidence for a claim. Quoting any Wiki is seriously dubious.

[136 or 142]

Yes, it was 6 years ago. Not ancient history, but it's clear that you have no real knowledge of the Court, or of Scalia himself. You have one case which you present. And you use that one because everyone knows about that case.

I wasn't aware that right-wing people were in favor of flag burning? He wasn't ruling to favor anyone, not the judges, not the legislature, he simply viewed the constitution in its rawest form. I don't agree with him on many (if not almost all) of his rulings, but if you read what he wrote (and you were able to be objective) you would see that he was a judicial genius. His explanations are simply awesome. Yet I don't agree with them.

But I can be objective.

I think I've shown on this board many times that I have no problem being objective.  I've had discussions about Scalia here in the past and I'm not the only person who argued that, while what you wrote, may have been true in his younger days on the Supreme Court that by the end he was making decisions that agreed with his ideological positions whether it agreed with precedent, with what the U.S Constitution said, or even, on occasion, with what he previously argued.

And, it wasn't just liberals who made that argument about Scalia.  So, I don't know that we necessarily disagree completely about Scalia, just that your views about him are the ones that seem to be dated.

[136 or 142]

Quoting a source like Rational Wiki is not evidence for a claim. Quoting any Wiki is seriously dubious.

Most of the Wikis are much better than they were a few years ago based on tests of accuracy and wikipedia itself has been shown to be no better or worse than highly respected encyclopedias.  Again, the links are there on the site.  So, I'd say that RationalWiki is much better evidence for a claim than your opinions which don't seem to be based on everything except for, perhaps, out of date evidence.

[Showroom Dummy]

Meet the next Supreme Court Judge, Sri Srinivasan.  :
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/05/23/sri-srinivasan-judge-supreme-court-circuit-dc-obama-bush/2351543/



CNN is speculating he's the top pick.

lol  yeah  maybe they read my post 

this maybe one who is considered
Sri Srinivasan  - a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit  -His Senate confirmation hearing on April 10, 2013, was uneventful. On June 11, 2012, Obama nominated Srinivasan to the seat on the D.C. Circuit. by a unanimous vote of 18 ayes to 0 nays. A final vote on his nomination took place on May 23, 2013, where he was confirmed

[Claudius]

Most of the Wikis are much better than they were a few years ago based on tests of accuracy and wikipedia itself has been shown to be no better or worse than highly respected encyclopedias.  Again, the links are there on the site.  So, I'd say that RationalWiki is much better evidence for a claim than your opinions which don't seem to be based on everything except for, perhaps, out of date evidence.

That's true about Wikipedia en mass, but rational wiki, come on it's a very biased source. My claims are not out of date they are that his judicial philosophy was based much more upon strict constitutionalism and that how he supported his arguments was simply brilliant. You're the one who started off this entire back-and-forth by calling him scum, and that you were glad he was dead, and that he only ruled for the rich. You're simply obfuscating the original argument which you made. Just because someone disagrees with you, or are more conservative, that doesn't make them right-wing or some stooge of "the right-wing boogie man". 

[136 or 142]

That's true about Wikipedia en mass, but rational wiki, come on it's a very biased source. My claims are not out of date they are that his judicial philosophy was based much more upon strict constitutionalism and that how he supported his arguments was simply brilliant. You're the one who started off this entire back-and-forth by calling him scum, and that you were glad he was dead, and that he only ruled for the rich. You're simply obfuscating the original argument which you made. Just because someone disagrees with you, or are more conservative, that doesn't make them right-wing or some stooge of "the right-wing boogie man".

Rational wiki is biased in that it's quite snarky in terms of expressing disagreements but there are very few occasions even when I disagree with their opinions, that I could find any facts that they cited as being incorrect.  It is a very accurate site despite it's obvious partisan leanings.

As to everything else you wrote
1.I agree with rational wiki that 'constitutionalism' is a meaningless phrase.  In this case, don't just say 'rational wiki is biased'.  Since you seem to be all for argument, rebut their argument that a strict constitutionalist could never make a ruling on legal issues regarding the internet since the internet didn't exist when the Constitution was written.  Clearly a 'strict constitutionalist' would argue that taking what the Constitution says on similar 'free speech' issues or whatever issues the internet may bring up, would not be good enough because that would still require 'reading into' the Constitution.

2.He was and still is scum.

3.I'm still glad he's dead.

4.I conceded your point that he was more than just fighting for the rich and fighting against the poor, as I said that for at least the last ten or so years that he was on the Supreme Court his only interest was in legislating from the bench his far right wing ideological views.

5.I don't know what the difference between 'right wing' and conservative is.

6.I never said anything like he was 'the stooge of a right wing boogyman.'  If anything he was the boogyman.

[136 or 142]

That's true about Wikipedia en mass, but rational wiki, come on it's a very biased source. My claims are not out of date they are that his judicial philosophy was based much more upon strict constitutionalism and that how he supported his arguments was simply brilliant. You're the one who started off this entire back-and-forth by calling him scum, and that you were glad he was dead, and that he only ruled for the rich. You're simply obfuscating the original argument which you made. Just because someone disagrees with you, or are more conservative, that doesn't make them right-wing or some stooge of "the right-wing boogie man".

Is there seriously a debate that black people are slower learners as Scalia claimed?

Or that homosexuals make inferior parents?

Or that the voting rights act perpeptuated 'racial entitlement' in favor of black people?  (Another opinion of his that over rode the elected legislature.)

I think it's you who are too enamored by his writings to judge him objectively for the 'man' he was :a hate filled and vile POS

[FearBoysWithBugs]

Meet the next Supreme Court Judge, Sri Srinivasan.  :
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/05/23/sri-srinivasan-judge-supreme-court-circuit-dc-obama-bush/2351543/



CNN is speculating he's the top pick.

Great.  About time we got some fuckin color on that bench.  I'm not counting Thomas because he's an oreo.

[littlechris]

Is there seriously a debate that black people are slower learners as Scalia claimed?

Oh damn, he said that??  Fuck that nigga then!!

[VtaGeezer]

Cruz would be the best choice if they can delay the nomination until Trump is sworn in.

HAH!!  Confirmed by all his Senate friends and admirers; especially Mitch McM, whom he called a liar on the Senate Floor.  You bet. 

[albrecht]

Is there seriously a debate that black people are slower learners as Scalia claimed?

Or that homosexuals make inferior parents?

Or that the voting rights act perpeptuated 'racial entitlement' in favor of black people?  (Another opinion of his that over rode the elected legislature.)

I think it's you who are too enamored by his writings to judge him objectively for the 'man' he was :a hate filled and vile POS

Statistically, maybe, but again it is a very hard thing to actually figure out because there are so many other variables that, likely, are more important (income, which country, what major, what school, method of entry- as normal people or on an athletic scholarship, affirmative actioned, etc.) And, ultimately, it is the individual that matters (contrary to most leftist opinion in which all should be judged with regard to what class, race, ethnic type, religion etc and sorted or helped/hurt accordingly.) Certainly just raw numbers in terms of drop-out rates, even when given some 'affirmative action'- maybe on account of that?- the numbers bear him out. Or, for the sake of argument, if one wants to go "macro" name a successful country in, say, Africa when compared to, say, Asian or European countries (all of which experienced the same dreaded colonialism, slavery, wars, genocides, etc over history.) Heck, just for fun, look at formerly 1st world countries or one that fed much of the continent, like Rhodesia or South Africa and the situation today. Odd. Though, to me, it is about the person not 'what' they are. And the social planning and corrective measures, as seen in drop-out rates, actually might hurt people. Again, there are many other factors and not just race, as most leftists seem to think, but numbers can bear out some arguments if one doesn't consider the other factors. And there is something also to be said about the condescending attitude that assumes some kind of mental privation or disability and thus needing special handling simply on account of one's race, gender, sexual antics, religion, etc, especially since ALL peoples, races, cultures, etc have had wars, colonialism, slavery, genocides, and various other tragic events.

[GuerrillaUnReal]

Great.  About time we got some fuckin color on that bench.  I'm not counting Thomas because he's an oreo.

He does seem to have an impeccable track record. My concern would be he's only been a judge since Obama appointed him in 2013 and I'm completely not interested in Obama's race politics anymore. But what I've read about the guy he seems like an intriguing pick.

With that said, I can't seem to find much beyond liberal outlets sucking this guy's cock voraciously so I'm not completely sure what he brings to the game outside of being extremely popular in the judicial arenas he's been in.

[FearBoysWithBugs]

I can't seem to find much beyond liberal outlets sucking this guy's cock voraciously

"A final vote on his nomination took place on May 23, 2013, where he was confirmed 97â€"0"

This is from the same Senate that can't agree on the color of shit.

Apparently you prefer to get your information from "liberal" sites depicting acts of homosexual fellatio.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  You fags can get married now and everything.

[GuerrillaUnReal]

"A final vote on his nomination took place on May 23, 2013, where he was confirmed 97â€"0"

This is from the same Senate that can't agree on the color of shit.

Apparently you prefer to get your information from "liberal" sites depicting acts of homosexual fellatio.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  You fags can get married now and everything.

[Richard Groyper]

Great.  About time we got some fuckin color on that bench.  I'm not counting Thomas because he's an oreo.

Put me in coach! I've watched Perry Mason! And sometimes Matlock. I'm a man of people. White people. 

[Robert Ghostwolf's Ghost]

Since The Constitution doesn't mention a cut off day for making Supreme Court appointments, if you think there should one, what should it be and why?  Show your work.

And if we had a Republican President and a Democratic majority Senate, everyone's position on the situation would be the reverse of what it is now, so there's no point in anyone pretending to be acting purely on principle. We've all been guilty of that at one time or another, so we might as well admit it. 

[Roswells, Art]

Since The Constitution doesn't mention a cut off day for making Supreme Court appointments, if you think there should one, what should it be and why?  Show your work.

And if we had a Republican President and a Democratic majority Senate, everyone's position on the situation would be the reverse of what it is now, so there's no point in anyone pretending to be acting purely on principle. We've all been guilty of that at one time or another, so we might as well admit it. 

It would be nice if someone came from an objective point of view. Kind of like Heinlein's 'fair witnesses'  I'm naive though.

[Robert Ghostwolf's Ghost]

It would be nice if someone came from an objective point of view. Kind of like Heinlein's 'fair witnesses'.

I'll give that an Amen!

[136 or 142]

In addition to previous articles that I've posted that showed (or opined) that Scalia's interpretation of the U.S Constitution ended up in his later years at least as being whatever was consistent with his ideology and not what Scalia thought was consistent with any actual interpretation of the U.S Constitution, here is another one:

The Supreme Court’s creation of new religious rights for closely-held corporations, Burwell, Secretary of HHS v. Hobby Lobby, makes clear that while Antonin Scalia is winning his career-long war for more governmental accommodation of religion, he is doing it by silently consenting to the further dismantling of one of his most important decisions, Employment Division v. Smith.

The Hobby Lobby decision follows the logic of Citizens’ United in arguing that corporations, which have been ruled to have protected Free Speech rights for election campaign donations, now have the right to ignore portions of a federal law if they are “closely held corporations,” whose owners object to the law on religious grounds.

But I wonder whether the people that Scalia seeks to channel for this understanding, using his historical originalism theory to divine what the people in the state ratifying conventions of the Constitution in 1788 or the Bill of Rights in 1791 understood those words to mean, would agree? Under the Bill of Rights, would those Founding-era people have agreed with the majority in Hobby Lobby that the religious rights of the owners of corporations trump the constitutional rights of their workers to exercise their personal autonomy privacy right to choose their own form of family planning? In Scalia’s historical originalist terms, if there had been a tea shop run by two former employees of the British East India Company in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1791, would Thomas Jefferson and James Madison have agreed that under the First Amendment religion clauses its owners could have imposed their Church of England religious views on their American employees in opposition to a federal law dealing with the personal autonomy choices of their workers? Of course not. It is hard to imagine that the same people who fought and won a revolution against the economic enterprises of King George III and Parliament, believed that the Bill of Rights were intended to protect the free speech and religion rights of such corporations.

At issue in Hobby Lobby is just how protective of religious rights the Court will be in applying the First Amendment’s Free Exercise of Religion clause. Prior to 1990, the Court used a complicated “compelling state interest” and “least restrictive means” test, requiring that the state make an exception to its law if that regulation “substantially burdened” a “central” belief in a person’s religion, unless the state could demonstrate that there was no other way to achieve its aim. The complication was that despite what seemed to be a balance here that favored protecting religious rights, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor always provided the fifth vote in favor of state regulation, because she argued that the laws did not affect “central” religious views.

Scalia changed the standard in a 1990 case called Employment Division v. Smith, dealing with the firing of a Native American who was a drug counselor for a private company and who ingested peyote for religious reasons, thus was denied his right to receive unemployment benefits from the state. Ignoring that using peyote was a central part of some Native Americans’ religion, Scalia returned to a much older “secular regulation rule,” under which general state regulations, that applied to everyone equally and did not target specific religious groups, would be upheld if they were “reasonable.” Contrary to Hobby Lobby, in which the Court animates corporations in order to protect their religious rights, Scalia allowed Oregon’s anti-drug law to operate regardless of its religiously discriminatory effect on the Native American litigant’s religion.

But, by his own description a “faint-hearted originalist” who upheld key precedents at times, Scalia also held that the higher level, religious rights protective exception could be used in certain situations, such as when the Court considered a “hybrid case,” raising more than one constitutional issue, or if the states or Congress passed a law imposing the more protective standard. In the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Congress restored the higher level, “compelling interest” rule, thus protecting persons whose religious rights were “substantially burdened.” While the Court four years later overturned this law when it applied to state governments, it later upheld its application to the federal government. Since then, the Court has repeatedly added exception after exception expanding the use of the higher level test elsewhere, thus piecemeal limiting the reach of Scalia’s Smith holding and, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued in dissent, extending religious protections under Congressional law that go far beyond what it had found for decades under the First Amendment itself. Since the Obama administration had allowed for exceptions to its contraception provision in the Affordable Care Act to some religiously-affiliated facilities, its argument for being unable to grant an exception to Hobby Lobby was doomed to lose once the Court ruled that this corporation was a protected person.

When I teach about the First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion at Lafayette College, which used to occupy a routine pair of classes, I now wheel into the classroom a large white board that will occupy us for weeks, filled with all of the exceptions that the Court has created here restoring, in piecemeal fashion, the pre-Scalia, 1990 decision, world. I explain what has become the “Swiss Cheesing” of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause, allowing, among others, for claims to be considered for exceptions for federal prisoners and others being held in government institutions, for a religious group in Hialeah, Florida seeking to sacrifice animals in religious ceremonies, and for a small religious group seeking to drink ceremonial hallucinogenic tea from the Amazon. The string of exceptions to Scalia’s Smith rule has created so many holes that there is almost no cheese left. After the Hobby Lobby decision, I will have to make one more change to the top of my board, one which risks doubling the number of exceptions, adding next to the words “person’s Free Exercise of Religion rights,” the phrase “and closely-held corporations’ religious rights”

Even though the majority in Hobby Lobby has further limited Scalia’s Smith case holding, since that result comports with his pro-religious accommodation, pro-corporation constitutional rights, viewpoint, he silently votes with them. While Scalia likes to say in his public speeches that his version of the Constitution is “Dead. Dead. Dead,” once more his reading of Founding era history to construct his originalist interpretation of the Constitution is very much an evolving work in progress.
By Bruce Allen Murphy is the author of Scalia: A Court of One (Simon and Schuster, 2014) and is the Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.
â€" See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156300#sthash.GQETcyBw.dpuf

[21st Century Man]

This is the best news I've heard in a while. RIH POS Scalia.

Feel the hate. Only a liberal would hate someone like that with every fiber of their soul.

RIP The honorable Antonin Scalia.

[21st Century Man]

things can be held over to the next presidency since republicans hold the majority  and will not want obama being allowed to nominate anyone -one problem as you know is the court is usually split 4-4 with the ninth vote being very important -with the court voting for a year possibly with 8 justices this in itself is unprecedented which than leads to a another debate of the  balance of the court

This is a good point.  However, the edge still goes to the left with Roberts and Kennedy on the bench.