‘You Shouldn’t Appoint Someone Like Scalia to Any Office’

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Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

2/25/2016

CounterSpin interview with Paul Rosenberg on the legacy of Antonin Scalia

By Janine Jackson



Janine Jackson: Chief Justice John Roberts said that the death of Antonin Scalia, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice who died February 13, represents “a great loss to… the country he so loyally served.” But though encomia lauding Scalia’s service and his philosophy are coming from many quarters, they are rubbing many people very wrong indeed. And mindful of journalism as a first draft of history, some are concerned that Scalia’s official memory will be a serious distortion of his real ideas and impact. Paul Rosenberg is a contributor at Salon.com, a columnist for Al Jazeera English and senior editor at Random Lengths News. He joins us now by phone from Southern California. Welcome to CounterSpin, Paul Rosenberg.

Paul Rosenberg: Hi. Glad to be with you.

JJ: We expect obituaries to tell us about a person’s unfailing graciousness and how he loved a joke and shooting skeet. But it matters very much how reporters characterize Scalia’s ideas and his record. I was never going to shoot skeet with the guy, but I am living in a country whose laws he shaped. So I want to start you with what is presented as his big idea, what’s behind the “conservative intellectual renaissance” that the New York Times says that Scalia led: originalism. Now, setting aside how Scalia used it, how much sense does it make just as an idea, originalism?

PR: Well, how he used it makes a lot less sense than the broader sense that it conveys.

JJ: Uh-huh.

PR: If you want to take the broader sense to mean trying to understand what things were originally intended to do, that can be a useful starting place. But if you limit it to dictionary meanings at the time, that’s a really bizarre way to go about things.

And it’s not something that he even did himself when it came to perhaps his most notorious case, Heller, in which he just ignored the preamble to the Second Amendment and said, oh, that just doesn’t count. You know, we don’t have to worry about “well-regulated militias,” let’s just go right to “the right to bear arms.” It’s more of a posture, a bludgeoning instrument to attack others than something that’s really a solid guiding principle that he himself actually was faithful to, or that any of us should take seriously, really.

You want to look to political psychology to understand what’s going on here. It’s very much reasoning to reach a predetermined result, and that’s not what judges are supposed to do. But people can’t help but do it. What they can do is to be more conscious. And he was one of the least conscious people at what he was doing.

For example, I point to a very devastating review of his book that was written by another very prominent conservative, Judge Richard Posner, who’s been called the most important conservative thinker who’s not on the Supreme Court.

JJ: Uh-huh.

PR: And he just ripped that book to shreds. And I make reference to it in my piece, because it’s so devastating and yet you can’t say, “Oh, he’s just a liberal attacking Scalia.” He’s someone who comes out of the same general political philosophy, but he thinks that Scalia’s presentation and way of thinking about it is just hopelessly muddled and incoherent, the exact opposite of what his reputation is.

JJ: If someone wants to know what are the biggest cases or the most lasting legacy of Scalia’s time on the Court, what would you point to?

PR: Bush v. Gore, obviously.

in full: http://fair.org/home/you-shouldnt-appoint-someone-like-scalia-to-any-office/

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1. Scalia was a judicial hack.

Scalia wrapped himself in the self-created mantle of Constitutional originalist and defender of the Framer's intentions, when the truth was that he was an arrogant, bigoted, caustic, self-serving ninny who thought his judicial shit did not stink. When in fact, his opinions reeked of partisan prejudice and switched from "originalist" to acutely activist depending on the matter at hand.

Further, he did not belong on the bench of the SCOTUS. He had very little compassion and empathy for others and showed no capacity for compromise. He was placed on the SCOTUS for a reason: to create and perpetuate a solid, conservative majority.

Bush v. Gore was a travesty, a judicial coup d'etat which disenfranchised the citizens of the country and negated the legal and lawful will of the people. Scalia was one of the ringleaders, destroying the Framer's original purpose and intent and shitting upon the main premise of all equal under the law.

Rot in hell, Anton Scalia. Rot. In. Hell.

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2. Bingo!

On all counts.

[Raster]

3. I sincerely hope that: (1) the next President is a Democrat; and (2) has the good sense to appoint..

...intelligent, decent, empathetic, compassionate individuals with the capacity to compromise when necessary and to be able to see the Constitution as a living, breathing AND EVOLVING guide for the future of our country.