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Mr. Justice Antonin Scalia, RIP
Thirty years ago, our own John Yoo once explained to me, not a single major law school considered “original meaning” a valid approach to the Constitution. Today, no law school can be considered serious unless it has a number of originalists on its faculty. What caused this change? One man: Antonin Scalia.
Brilliant, funny, warm, and, from time to time, cutting, but only in defense of principle, Antonin Scalia displayed a pure and fierce devotion to his family, to the Church, and to the Constitution of the United States. Here, my last interview with him, which we recorded before a meeting of the Federalist Society in 2012. One last time, that mind.
Published in General
I’ve been thinking about that interview as well because I had the great privilege of being there along with several other Ricochet members. I remember thinking at the time what a great, unique experience to sit and listen to a sitting Supreme Court Justice, and Scalia at that.
RIP, Justice Scalia. A great man, a great Catholic, a great jurist.
What terrible news. But what a gift he has been to his country. Rest in peace.
I think Justice Scalia’s death is a great loss to our country and I want to cry.
I just made the mistake of reading the comments on Politico’s Facebook post announcing Scalia’s passing. I need a shower now.
A Tremendous loss. We are all the worse off for his departure.
May the LORD bless you and keep you;
The LORD lift is face to shine upon you;
And give you peace.
Rest in peace Justice Scalia.
Same on Facebook, Sheila. These people are so ignorant of our both 3-branch system of government and Justice Scalia’s actual philosophy and rulings.
I came of age with (and in) Vietnam, then watched the liberals push America into the gloomy Pit: Watergate, the NVA conquest of Saigon, Roe v. Wade, the panicked sanctimonious response to the OPEC oil embargo, the manifold horrors of Jimmy Carter. The presidency of Ronald Reagan was a cyclone that dispelled the clouds and let the light back in. The appointment of Justice Scalia was part of that effulgence.
I chatted with him once, over coffee and doughnuts in a church basement after Mass. After a federal judge set aside a California referendum, I proposed that Gov. Grey Davis arrest the judge for violating the Federal Constitutional duty to guarantee the States a republican form of government. A relative mentioned it to Scalia at a D. C. dinner. He grinned and said “I like that”.
The heart sinks. How awful.
RIP. And if Cruz can’t indict Trump tonight on the SCOTUS issue, he’s toast to me. Conversely, this should of mark the beginning of the end of Trump’s run.
Scalia’s death of natural causes, and Hillary’s 6 coin tosses in a row? Chicago-style politics are ugly and totally corrupt.
Amen.
This is terrible news.
Much as I favor the ‘mourn now, politics later,’ approach, this issue is so important that I hope there is genuine, non-rancorous, respectful discussion of it, and of the various candidate’s positions and thoughts relative to Supreme Court appointments, at tonight’s ‘debate.’
I sure hope the chair of the judiciary committee’s Twitter about rejecting all Obama nominations was in response to some heinous comment.
This is the time to remember a great man, not to treat him or his court post as some sort of political marker.
We need to pray people. Pray.
I remember in the early days of the internet the first Supreme Court decision I ever read was Evans v Romer. What a joy it was to read Scalia’s dissent. What clear prose, what clear thinking. And the cutting wit!
May his soul rest in peace and may the Lord comfort his wife, 9 children, and grandchildren.
Obama will see this as an opportunity to cement his legacy. Obamacare, his immigration shenanigans, his unlawful executive orders, his horrible foreign policy, etc., etc., can all be undone. But naming a 3rd justice will do more to put his progressive agenda in place than anything else he has done in his 8 years. I hope Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are up for the fight of their lives.
RIP Mr. Scalia.
This is incredibly sad news. It’s also a possible game changer.
And to set the stage for tonight’s debate, Donald Trump’s first inclination when speaking about the Supreme Court was that
This is both Ted Cruz’s and Marco Rubio’s opportunity to stress the importance of having a conservative history and temperament and most importantly proper judgement which is challenging for Donald Trump to claim given his many articulated positions that run counter to conservative principles – abortion, the use of eminent domain, single-payer healthcare, and the lack of any discernible desire to reduce the size, power and authority of the federal government.
Either Cruz or Rubio need to cite Trump’s remarks about his sister specifically to hammer the point home that Donald Trump’s judgement and his lack of credible conservative history and temperament mean that the court will drift further Left in a Trump administration.
If Trump objects, as he is likely to, then both Cruz and Rubio need to press Trump on eminent domain and other constitutional issues so the debate audience can see for themselves where he is deficient. I would be surprised if Trump even knows what “originalism” means. He’s got about two hours to study up before the debate. Good luck with that.
I didn’t know he had 9 children. May they all be as honorable as he.
I pray the Scalia’s have comfort and peace at this time.
RIP. From all accounts, he was an even better man than he was a justice, and he was an outstanding justice.
Yes I can’t even look at the lefty posts on Facebook- my goodness.
I agree with Peter’s description,
EXCEPT…
The Church? The Smith decision was the most anti-religion opinion the court ever issued. It caused Bill Clinton of all people to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Immigration is more important than all of those issues. Cruz can hit Trump effectively, Rubio (whose only accomplishment was an immigration disaster) cannot.
His was a civil fierceness, one born of a conviction that the law was a great gift to mankind and needed to be defended with both clarity and courage. He changed the way we think about the law by the force of his intellect and the piercing directness of his opinions (both majority and dissents). Prayers for his family, and shame to those spewing disparaging filth on Facebook, etc. RIP, Mr. Justice.
You cannot overstate his influence. No law student or attorney can consider his library complete unless it includes the legal writing guide Scalia authored with Brian Garner; beyond that, you are not a serious legal writer unless your copy is tattered and dog-eared. His prose may be the best of any justice save Holmes. His influence on the law puts him in the company of Marshall, Story, Cardozo (pre-Supreme Court), Warren, and Rehnquist. He is a giant.
Justice Scalia tried to convince the left that to say the government lacks the power to do something is not to say that the thing the government wants to do is bad. He died in vain…
Immigration is one issue among many. It makes absolutely no sense to secure the border – which every Republican candidate is pushing to do – while at the same time undermining the Constitution buy appointing moderate-to-liberal judges that would continue push this country down the path to a European-style socialist state. Rubio, not Cruz, figured out a way and pushed Congress to curtail the risk corridors of Obamacare that prohibited taxpayer money to prop up insurers who are finding that adhering to the ACA is not financially feasible. There are numerous articles on this. Here’s just one.
The issue is about Trump’s judgement or lack thereof. Given his remarks about his sister, his stand on eminent domain for personal pet projects and his admiration for single-payer healthcare, it’s an indication that he can’t be trusted to appoint justices that would have a similar originalist temperament of the late Antonin Scalia. It will be a topic this evening. Enjoy the show.
Personnel is policy, and demographics is destiny. Good luck getting Black-Mestizo-Asian America to care about the 2nd amendment or eminent domain abuse. All of those issues you care about would be winnable provided American remains solidly majority white. Otherwise, they are all lost.
I am so sad. It feels like an exclamation point on the end of an era.
My tears are selfish yet I’m smiling in spite of them because Anthony Scalia was first and foremost, a Christian.
The Lord’s peace to his family and to the nation he leaves behind.
I do understand that we’ve reached a point in American politics, and sadly on the Republican side, that dealing with issues such as the make-up of the Supreme Court, knowledge about foreign policy and national security, the economy, the threat of a growing Executive Branch, the threat of an uncontrolled bureaucracy bent on attacking individual freedoms aren’t as apparently important as buying into empty promises from a narcissist crony-capitalist who has no clue about many of these issues and threats to the country but promises somehow to make it great again. I realize that appealing to the Republican electorates’ intellect is a risky strategy but I think it’s a risk worth taking.
That’s completely unresponsive to my point (mainly because there is no response) but my candidate is Cruz.
Not at all. Your comment suggested that selective ethnic groups in the general electorate are not interested in these topics. I am responding by speaking about what the Republican electorate should be interested in…since the first order of business is to put forth a nominee. Frankly, I think that’s a more cogent point than your inference that my white privilege obscures what’s really important to voters.
Helpful media criticism from my favorite media critics:
http://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/2/13/its-impossible-to-praise-or-attack-justice-scalia-without-dealing-with-his-catholic-faith