Justice Antonin Scalia, Known For Biting Dissents, Dies At 79

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Updated February 13, 20166:54 PM ET Published February 13, 20165:37 PM ET



Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the leading voice of uncompromising conservatism on the nation's highest court, was found dead Saturday, Chief Justice John Roberts has confirmed. Scalia, who had been staying at a luxury ranch in West Texas, was 79 years old.

"On behalf of the Court and retired Justices, I am saddened to report that our colleague Justice Antonin Scalia has passed away," Roberts said in a statement. "He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues. His passing is a great loss to the Court and the country he so loyally served."

In his 29 years on the court, Scalia achieved almost a cult following for his acerbic dissents, which in many ways shaped the ongoing legal debate over how courts should interpret the Constitution.

For decades Scalia railed against the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion, affirmative action, gay rights and religion. He lived to see many of the decisions he so reviled trimmed and even overturned after President George W. Bush replaced two conservative justices with even more conservative justices. But Scalia remained impatient with the pace of change. His influence continued, not by brokering consensus, but by goading his colleagues with biting dissents.

He was a fundamentalist in both his faith and his constitutional interpretation, according to former Solicitor General Paul Clement, a onetime clerk to Scalia.

"I think that he looks for bright lines in the Constitution wherever he can. I think he thinks that his faith provides him clear answers," Clement said, "and I think that's sufficient unto him in most areas."

A fine example of that was Scalia's landmark 2008 decision declaring that the Constitution confers on individuals a right to own a gun. The decision was greeted with cheers by gun enthusiasts, but denounced by police chiefs and big city mayors.

"We hold that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to have and use arms for self defense in the home," Scalia said in striking down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns.


Rest of story can be found here.


http://www.npr.org/2016/02/13/140647230/justice-antonin-scalia-known-for-biting-dissents-dies-at-79



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This is a game changer. No matter who wins the coming election, the conservative majority Roberts Courts is over.
 
Interesting choice of what he was known for. I would have gone with "hypocritical legal chicanery."
 
Principled people can still be bad and bad for a nation.
 
Depends who you ask. Love him or hate him, Scalia was a very major figure in the past few decades of the US.
 
Depends who you ask. Love him or hate him, Scalia was a very major figure in the past few decades of the US.

He was, so what? Lots of people with bad ideas are influential for long periods of time. Some of them are even really smart.
 
He was, so what? Lots of people with bad ideas are influential for long periods of time. Some of them are even really smart.



Sure. And I hate the guy as much as anyone. But I still wouldn't expect a good news source to take a death of a major figure not even cold yet and start singing 'ding dong the witch is dead!'
 
Sure. And I hate the guy as much as anyone. But I still wouldn't expect a good news source to take a death of a major figure not even cold yet and start singing 'ding dong the witch is dead!'
I do agree with you on that though. Good manners would suggest that one wait at least until after the funeral. :)
 
Very few people, however, sat on SCOTUS in their career and say black people are too dumb to go to the University of Texas.

That's massively taking out of context what he was saying and why he was saying it, and I fear that most of what he has done of the years is liable to be taken out of context by people without any legal training. There's a tendency for the general population to misunderstand legal judgments, or form their opinions about those legal judgments on the basis of the result. As I understand it, Scalia could be quite inconsistent with the application of his originalist principles. But accusing him of inconsistency is quite different to accusing him of being an idiot or acting without legal reasoning, which appear to be some of the more popular criticisms.
 
On the other hand his dissent on Obergergefell is pretty wacky
 
As was the majority opinion, but in neither case does it make sense to treat the case as a purely political exercise.

It's like how the High Court ruled a couple of weeks ago ruled in favour of the government's Nauru detention, and some people appeared to bizarrely take this as a sign that they actually approved of the policy. I even saw a criticism of some of the justices for using the word 'aliens', when that's a legal term of art.

The disconnect seems to be when people treat legal cases like they are the same thing as a political vote, with anything the judges say therefore just being specious reasoning to justify a position already taken for some partisan purpose. This appears to be a particularly problematic perception in the US, and Scalia appears to be a principle victim of it.
 
As was the majority opinion, but in neither case does it make sense to treat the case as a purely political exercise.

It's like how the High Court ruled a couple of weeks ago ruled in favour of the government's Nauru detention, and some people appeared to bizarrely take this as a sign that they actually approved of the policy. I even saw a criticism of some of the justices for using the word 'aliens', when that's a legal term of art.

The disconnect seems to be when people treat legal cases like they are the same thing as a political vote, with anything the judges say therefore just being specious reasoning to justify a position already taken for some partisan purpose. This appears to be a particularly problematic perception in the US, and Scalia appears to be a principle victim of it.

When 4 of the justices said that money collected by the nation's tax collector, based on information people reported in their tax returns, was not a tax I think their partiality rightfully comes into question. I don't necessarily find the conservative justices the only ones given to partisan rulings, but they are by far the more egregious ones.
 
When 4 of the justices said that money collected by the nation's tax collector, based on information people reported in their tax returns, was not a tax I think their partiality rightfully comes into question. I don't necessarily find the conservative justices the only ones given to partisan rulings, but they are by far the more egregious ones.

This is precisely the type of attitude I'm talking about, actually. What you're describing is a perfectly legitimate legal argument (albeit perhaps wrong), but because it came in the context of a politicised issue, there's an automatic assumption that it's just voting along party lines; an assumption which conveniently avoids the need to actually engage with the legal reasoning.

I'm assuming you're referring to the Obamacare case. I'm not really familiar with it, but a brief skim of the dissent shows that those justices are actually engaging in legal reasoning. The idea seems to be that a penalty is not a tax. In Australian constitutional law at least, it is well established that a penalty is a different thing to a tax, and is not authorised by the constitutional taxation power (even if that penalty were to be collected by the tax office on the basis of what is disclosed in a tax return, such as a penalty for providing false information). More broadly, the indicia of a tax are notoriously flexible, such that even though payment might go into the Consolidated Revenue Fund, or even though payment is exacted by a public authority, or even though the payment is for a revenue-raising purpose, it may still not be a tax.

To selectively take the argument most favourable to the majority, and then use that to ignore the legal reasoning of the minority and say they must just have been biased, misrepresents what is happening from a legal perspective, and is precisely the problem I'm referring to.
 
So, does Obama get to replace him? Or will the Senate block any candidate in the hope that they get to confirm a judge next January that is even more conservative than Scalia?
 
Obama can only nominate. I think he will. Who knows what the senate will do. If they refuse to even consider/vote on his nomination, then I think there will be political fallout.
 
So, does Obama get to replace him? Or will the Senate block any candidate in the hope that they get to confirm a judge next January that is even more conservative than Scalia?
The Republican senate will likely block any attempt, but, am hearing, there's a short period at the end of his presidency where he can make an appointment.
 
So, does Obama get to replace him? Or will the Senate block any candidate in the hope that they get to confirm a judge next January that is even more conservative than Scalia?


Obama gets to nominate a replacement. But Republican leaders are already talking about rejecting any Obama nominee.
 
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