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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsExcellent writing by Jeffrey Toobin: Looking Back (Scalia)
Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor. The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward.
His revulsion toward homosexuality, a touchstone of his world view, appeared straight out of his sheltered, nineteen-forties boyhood. When, in 2003, the Court ruled that gay people could no longer be thrown in prison for having consensual sex, Scalia dissented, and wrote, Todays opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct. He went on, Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their childrens schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a life style that they believe to be immoral and destructive.
More at:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/antonin-scalia-looking-backward
pacalo
(24,721 posts)I didn't know that Scalia & O'Connor didn't like each other & that Rehnquist resisted giving the majority opinion to Scalia to write. I feel better about those two.
Firebrand Gary
(5,044 posts)I loved how Toobin brought it, directly. Scalia was a disaster, a foul, disgusting human being and has forever stained the bench! I'm glad that he will never write another opinion again.
Orrex
(63,215 posts)It's still my turn, dammit!