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Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Scalia Defends Judicial Ideology
By Scott Sandlin
Journal Staff Writer
There was wit, wry humor and occasional sarcasm as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia contrasted his judicial views with those of his philosophical adversaries on the court in a speech Tuesday at the Albuquerque Convention Center.
Scalia made the two camps — "originalists" like himself, versus the "living constitutionalists" — sound like warring tribes ripe for study by cultural anthropologists.
AP Photos/Craig Fritz Justice Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice Supreme Court of the United States, waits while being introduced before his speech in Kiva Auditorium at Albuquerque Convention center for an event co-sponsored by the Federalist Society and the University of New Mexico on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 in Albuquerque, N.M.
Originalists, of which he counts himself as part of a "small, but I hope growing, band," give the Constitution's words the exact meaning they had at the time they were written, he said.
"If you want change," he said, "do it as the Constitution itself provides, through the amendment process."
Scalia's speech to about 1,000 people at the convention center was cosponsored by the Federalist Society and the University of New Mexico School of Law.
Law School Dean Leo Romero remarked on Scalia's "remarkable stamina" during an introduction that was upstaged by Scalia's emergence from behind a curtain. Video cameras were barred from the event, and still photography was permitted only during the first two minutes of the justice's speech.
The controversial 73-year-old jurist had a full day. He spoke to two constitutional-law classes at UNM, conducted a question-and-answer session with law students and attended a faculty lunch before his sole public event.
After the speech, he had a reception with the Federalist Society before heading north with U.S. District Judge James A. Parker to go fly-fishing.
Scalia said some of his colleagues on the court believe the death penalty is unconstitutional, but he noted that it is mentioned implicitly in the Bill of Rights, which proscribes any person being "deprived of life, liberty or property" without due process of law.
He mocked the idea of the Constitution as a "living document," getting a laugh with his deadpan quip that he favored a "dead document" before explaining that what he's defending is "an enduring document."
And that, he said, means a document that does not change with the times.
"Some people think originalism is a stalking horse for conservatism," he said, adding that it in fact sometimes favors liberal views and sometimes conservative ones.
Answering a few questions from the audience, he reiterated a view he has expressed in his written opinions, sometimes blisteringly, that the court should "resist the temptation to use foreign law" in opinions about U.S. laws.
His view has put him at odds, not for the first time, with his friend, colleague and occasional opera date, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who defended citations from foreign courts during a speech in Columbus, Ohio, last week.
Answering a question about abortion, Scalia, who described himself earlier as a social conservative, said the Constitution has nothing to say on the topic.
"If you're serious about constitutionalism, you can't read into it either way," he said.
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