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Author | Topic: Scalia is a Scoundrel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22389 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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Just finished reading the NYT editorial The Roberts Court’s Reality Check, and it contained the following gems. This is Scalia writing last year in his opinion on Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agencey et al.:
But we, and EPA, must do our best, bearing in mind the "'fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.'" FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 133 (2000). As we reiterated the same day we decided Massachusetts, the presumption of consistent usage "readily yields" to context, and a statutory term‐even one defined in the statute‐"may take on distinct characters from association with distinct statutory objects calling for different implementation strategies." Duke Energy, supra, at 574. And yet here he is writing yesterday in his dissenting opinion concerning the ruling on the Affordable Care Act:
Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is "established by the State." It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words "established by the State." And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words "by the State" other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges. "[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover." Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved. So it seems that if Justice Scalia agrees with the words then they must be interpreted precisely literally, and if he disagrees then they must be interpreted in context. What a scoundrel he is, and a blatant one at that. --Percy
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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Scalia is a politician, pretending to be a jurist.
Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity
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Diomedes Member Posts: 995 From: Central Florida, USA Joined:
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Scalia is a politician, pretending to be a jurist I actually just think he is a right-wing religious wacko masquerading as a jurist. Read his dissenting opinion on the gay marriage ruling. He is basically saying that the constitution is being violated by not allowing the states to allow their voters to use mob rule to get what they want. Da FUQ??!!
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
First of all, yes Scalia is a scoundrel. But on the other hand, in each of the instance you cite, Scalia correctly cites provisions of statutory construction that the other Justices can be found to have used on particular occasions.
In this case, however, I think common sense prevailed. There is absolutely no indication in the statute or the legislative history that Congress intended any distinction state exchanges and the federal ones installed on behalf of the states. From the majority opinion.
quote: Yes, and the Supreme Court can clean that up in an appropriate case. I wonder what the GOP would have been forced to do if the Supreme Court had ruled oppositely. It is in republican states that are contained the most people who would lose all health coverage because the feds had to step in and set up exchanges. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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Percy Member Posts: 22389 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
NoNukes writes: First of all, yes Scalia is a scoundrel. But on the other hand, in each of the instance you cite, Scalia correctly cites provisions of statutory construction that the other Justices can be found to have used on particular occasions. You mean the other Justices have done the same thing as Scalia, chosing their interpretive scheme to fit their desired ends? It would be interesting to see examples of this. --Percy
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MrHambre Member (Idle past 1392 days) Posts: 1495 From: Framingham, MA, USA Joined:
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I actually just think he is a right-wing religious wacko masquerading as a jurist.
Correction: he's a toad masquerading as a jurist. This could go on all day. Scalia has always disgusted me just on his personality alone. It's common knowledge that he's a pushy, overbearing asshole who browbeats counsels and even other justices. But the dissent that he wrote on the marriage-equality case was a new low. It was full of ridicule and condescension toward his colleagues:
quote:I'm not a legal scholar or a Court historian, but I thought it lacked any sort of fair-mindedness or professionalism. The fact that he reserves this sort of immature rancor for a judgment about marriage equality just shows what a vile human being he is.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
You mean the other Justices have done the same thing as Scalia, chosing their interpretive scheme to fit their desired ends? At law school one of my professors told me that such thinking was the height of cynicism. There are varied schemes for deciding cases. In this case, the issues were not constitutional but were matters of statutory construction. The rules of statutory interpretation are well known and are applied at all levels of trial and appeal. However the rules produce contradictory results. Here is a list that is pretty consistent with what I was taught. Statutory Construction | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
quote: Use of the plain language gets Scalia the result he wants, and as long as he does not look at too much language, no lack of clarity is evident. Plain language is the first of the rules, but none of the rules are inviolate. I cannot say that Scalia chose his interpretive scheme to fit a desired end. But what I can say is that Justices are the very definition of competent, and every word of whatever opinion a Justice signs signs is going to be justified by an application of a well recognized and accepted interpretive scheme. It may or may not be the case that a Justice's actual reasoning in coming up with the answer is mapped out in the opinion. Scalia is a right wing nutcase and his rulings are going to be those of a right wing nutcase. Thomas appears to have a chip on his shoulder about not being taken seriously as a right winger. Small wonder either of these guys would not vote for ACA. The lawyer who identified the problem with the wording in the statue was fully aware that the law was simply badly drafted and that there was no intent to distinguish between federally established and state established exchanges. The 6 Justice majority properly recognized that the error was inconsistent with other portions of the statute. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
The fact that he reserves this sort of immature rancor for a judgment about marriage equality just shows what a vile human being he is. As you've noted, Scalia does frequently find occasion to berate his colleagues. Yes, it is immature, but he has done it often enough that we cannot really say he has reserved anything. But, yes, a decent human being might well have curbed his tongue here. I'm reminded of the situation in Brown v. Board of education which despite being controversial ended up being a unanimous decision because the Chief Justice worked his colleagues to get language they could buy into once it was clear what the majority would be. Trying to do that with this court would be like trying to herd cats, and I suspect that Justice Roberts knows better than to try it anymore. Justice Roberts writes his own dissent because he simply cannot sign onto the opinions that Scalia or Thomas wrote wrote. Alito also writes his own opinion. Only Thomas signs Scalia's crap. Thomas and Scalia each sign onto all of the dissenting opinions. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1509 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.4 |
You mean the other Justices have done the same thing as Scalia, chosing their interpretive scheme to fit their desired ends? It would be interesting to see examples of this. Here is a book FULL of examples. http://www.amazon.com/...me-Destroying-America/dp/1596980095 Can you name a liberal, long standing member of the supreme court, past or present, that you think is not a scoundrel? If so, name him or her, and I'll see what I can find.
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Percy Member Posts: 22389 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
marc9000 writes: You mean the other Justices have done the same thing as Scalia, chosing their interpretive scheme to fit their desired ends? It would be interesting to see examples of this.
Here is a book FULL of examples. http://www.amazon.com/...me-Destroying-America/dp/1596980095 From the Forum Guidelines:
--Percy
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9076 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.7 |
From looking at reviews it doesn't look like the book actually has anything of substance anyway.
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1509 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.4 |
From the Forum Guidelines: Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references. Oh okay, I can do that. I was just following the example set in the O/P, it was little more than a link & c/p. I'd like to see you elaborate, (in your own words) just what you think Scalia did. You seemed to indicate a major distinction between "precisely literally" and "context". Context is defined as the "weaving together of words". Is there a really huge difference in what he did from one year to the next? Could he say that he got one year older and one year wiser, and adjusted his decision making process somewhat? Is that a crime?
You mean the other Justices have done the same thing as Scalia, chosing their interpretive scheme to fit their desired ends? It would be interesting to see examples of this. Nowhere in the constitution is Supreme Court expressly given the authority to interject itself, or foreign governments into federal and state operations. Let's look at a few quotes from some other than Scalia; Thorgood Marshall, when asked about his judicial philosophy;
quote: A scoundrel? Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a speech,
quote: Maybe because it's not their job to do that Ruth, unless they're searching to do something they're not authorized to do. She continues;
quote: WOW what scoundrels, they actually understand what their job is, kind of like Scalia still does even today!!! She continues:
quote: We are losers if we neglect what others can tell CONGRESS, THE SENATE, OR THE PRESIDENT about these endeavors, but not the judiciary. Is Scalia a scoundrel, just because he's conservative? It's strange to me how the NY times (and you) pick this exact time to hammer on Scalia. The extreme left just scored a huge victory with the gay marriage thing. The left is pretty masterful with the gloat and taunt thing, but I suspect the negative attention towards Scalia is a fear of his concise, common sense comments on these activist Supreme Court decisions. They resonate with a LOT of people, some of them are people whose support and votes the Democrats don't want to lose. Do you need any more examples of Supreme Court justices chosing their interpretive scheme to fit their desired ends?
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Percy Member Posts: 22389 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
marc9000 writes: Oh okay, I can do that. I was just following the example set in the O/P, it was little more than a link & c/p. My opening post contained links for references and short precisely relevant excerpts, and I made the point in my own words, which I quote here:
Percy in Message 1 writes: So it seems that if Justice Scalia agrees with the words then they must be interpreted precisely literally, and if he disagrees then they must be interpreted in context. What a scoundrel he is, and a blatant one at that. Your post, on the other hand, could be paraphrased as, "This link says the liberals on the court are just as bad." --Percy
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9076 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.7 |
Did you read Percy's original post?
Judging from the argument you make in this post you did not. OH, are you going with the old Straw man?
Do you need any more examples of Supreme Court justices chosing their interpretive scheme to fit their desired ends? Seems to be what you are posting about , but this is not at all what Percy argued in the OP.
Percy writes:
Is a totally different argument. Do you want to rebut that or just throw up more straw men? So it seems that if Justice Scalia agrees with the words then they must be interpreted precisely literally, and if he disagrees then they must be interpreted in context.Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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Percy Member Posts: 22389 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
I can only guess that Marc was trying to argue that Ginsberg was contradictory in arguing both for and against referencing laws or decisions of other nations in Supreme Court decisions, but the speech excerpts Mark chose don't support that interpretation, and the contention isn't comparable to Scalia's scurrilous behavior anyway.
I don't know that there's any effective way to have a discussion with a free-association style. --Percy
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