Trust me, I'm as surprised as anyone to find myself in agreement with the Supreme Court's resident dick, Antonin Scalia. But in his dissent of the
Obergefell v. Hodges decision, he's absolutely correct.
Not about the ruling itself: no. Justice Kennedy accurately and artfully explains why same-sex marriage should be (and now is) legal in the United States.
The part that Scalia is right about is in his very second sentence: "I write separately to call attention to this Court's threat to American democracy."
Well, it's about damn time, Antonin! I'm glad that you finally have realized what many of us have known all along: that a conservative-majority court that hands down decisions like Citizens United is a true and real threat to American democracy and needs to be stopped at all costs!
More Scalian wisdom below the orange cloud of jurisprudence.
Scalia goes on to pinpoint the problem: "my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court."
Right you are again, Antonin, but isn't it funny how you didn't seem to care all that much before now? You didn't care when your conservative five-lawyer majority allowed unlimited, untraceable money into the electoral system, allowing billionaires to buy Congress. You didn't protest one whit when those same five lawyers allowed corporations - which are not people, my friend, regardless of what Mitt Romney says - to suddenly "get religion" to deprive women of birth control. And I don't seem to recall hearing a peep out of you on the subject of those (need I bother pointing out, same five) lawyers declaring Open Season in Washington DC and Chicago by overturning their firearms bans.
But you've figured it out now: "The Court [can end] debate, in an opinion lacking even the thin veneer of law."
And you really hit it right on the head, my dear Antonin, when you point out that "Judges are selected precisely for their skill as lawyers; whether they reflect the policy views of a particular consituency is not (or should not be) relevant." Shouldn't be, no, and yet here you sit regardless.
And in a footnote, you show remarkable self-awareness of the worth of the opinions of yourself and your conservative colleagues: "The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie." (Actually, it's worse than that, Justice. I've read many a fortune cookie packed with more wisdom than the Citizens United decision)
However, ultimately, it could not last. Towards the end, you lament that "The stuff contained in today's opinion has to diminish this Court's reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis." Oh, you almost had me! But alas, this Roberts court, and especially its two most conservative members - yourself and Justice Thomas - have never had any sort of reputation for either clear thinking or sober analysis (although its two most recent decisions may alter that slightly). You learned the right lessons, Antonin, but you applied them to the wrong case.
Ultimately, Justice Scalia is right: the Court in its current composition is a dangerous threat to democracy in this country. And if he wants to do something about it, he'll step down.
Sun Jun 28, 2015 at 5:22 AM PT: Well, looks like Dahlia Lithwick over at Slate noticed the same things I did! You can read her piece here: http://www.slate.com/...
Thanks for the reads, the recs, and the comments!