A Tribute Thread to SC Justice Scalia

[Bengalzona]

(02-16-2016, 02:30 PM)RoyleRedlegs Wrote: Then it should have been done in a more contextual way, not facebook meme kind of way. Unless that's the level of discussion you want. 

(02-16-2016, 02:33 PM)bfine32 Wrote: As I said; my apology stands.

Also consider your thread a success as I got "fired up' over what I percieved to be the petty nature of the thread.

(02-16-2016, 03:16 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I agree on this, however if we were to point out everything that is juvenile and in poor taste in this subforum we would be spending a lot more time than we already do in here doing so. This thread is a very mild example of that behavior in comparison to some other things we see around here.

We are an irreverent crew here in P&R. It is our nature and the nature of the topics (i.e. what some see as sancrosant, others do not). And frankly, as long as we are not insulting each other (such as calling other people "*****", etc.), P&R has always had a certain room for that irreverence.

I'm told that we need to have a certain reverence for the dead. Especially a Supreme Court Judge who served for so many years. For those who believe this, I think you are going about it the wrong way when you demand reverence based upon your morality. I think in today's society, you need to be able to explain to others why you think a certain person was great and, thereby, worthy of a certain reverence. I've been hoping to hear that from some of the more conservative posters here. But I haven't seen it yet. Saying Antonin Scalia was great because he sat on the highest court in the land is sort of like saying that Anthony Munoz was great because he is in the Hall of Fame. Saying Scalia was great because he was conservative is like saying Munoz was great just because he was a Bengal. It doesn't really describe what he did.

So I will tell those who are interested what he did and why he is worthy of some degree of reverence.

My eulogy to Antonin Scalia:
Antonin Scalia has been the champion of two legal positions during the past 40 years: Originalism and Textualism. Originalism is a concept that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed at the time it was enacted (i.e. the writer's of the Constitution wrote it exactly as it should be understood at that time and there is no need to re-interpret it, etc.). Textualism is basically that a legal text's ordinary meaning should govern its interpretation, not the intent or presumed intent of the writer, etc. These are some very basic definitions and a lot of heady writings have gone into these concepts from people who follow them and who oppose them (which I encourage people to read up on some). Both of these concepts are a part of what is called Legal Formalism theory. Basically in Legal Formalism theory, the feeling is that the substantive justice of a law should be addressed by the lawmakers, not the judge. The opposing viewpoint to this is Legal Instrumentalism or Legal Realism, a view that interpretation of the law is justified to serve the common good of society.

You might recognize some of the ideas floating around here about originalism and textualism as stuff you may have heard from Tea Party members. It has become part of the underpinning of the neo-conservative movement in America. But the ideas themselves are not necessarily conservative ideas: SC Justice Hugo Black (1937-1971), listed as a liberal judge, advocated these two concepts before Scalia. But Scalia took the ideas to a new level in his writings on the Supreme Court, and that caught the attention of the conservative world. This is why he is now considered a neo-con icon.

I posted a bunch of quotes and paraphrases in the OP, some of which seem really out of line or even ridiculous out-of-context. Bfine called me out on that, and he was right to do so. I was hoping someone would. You can't really get the idea of what Judge Scalia was trying to say out of just the isolated quote. And even then, you can't get the full idea outside of the concepts of Originalism and Textualism which he was framing most of those quotes (although I wonder if that counts in the agrument against Textualism ).

I don't necessarily agree with Scalia on the Originalism and Textualism. But I am nowhere near scholar enough to have ever argued them with him while he was alive. I also say this, it is an argument worth having and we, as a society, as better off for having someone like Scalia take up that side of the argument. I believe Judge Ginsberg would agree with me.