R.I.P Dear Antonin, Our Court's Brilliant, Exasperating, and Illogical Comic

[piezoe]

Jem, I am most interested in corresponding with regard to your opinion as to my Essay above. If you want to read my essay and them comment on it, I would be happy to entertain your opinion of it.

Ah, so here we have Originalist Scalia extolling hapless Princeton Law students not to play fast and lose with original meaning less they be "destroying democracy." Scalia, the Champion of Citizens United along with Justice Kennedy, lecturing anyone about not destroying democracy is not only ironic, it's Theater of the Absurd.

 

[jem]

wait a second here... while I agree there is too much money buying our politicians on the left and right... Kennedy wrote the opinion in citizens united not Scalia.

In his concurrence Scalia was concerned about the govt picking some groups over others. I think the issue was that Unions could still buy politicians but corporations could not. I can see how you would label that anti Democratic (as in the party), but I don't see that as being democracy.

In his concurrence Scalia wrote...

Justice Scalia joined the opinion of the Court, but also wrote a concurring opinion which was joined by Justice Alito in full and by Justice Thomas in part. Scalia addressed Justice Stevens' dissent, specifically with regard to the original understanding of the First Amendment. Scalia stated that Stevens' dissent was "in splendid isolation from the text of the First Amendment...It never shows why 'the freedom of speech' that was the right of Englishmen did not include the freedom to speak in association with other individuals, including association in the corporate form." He further considered the dissent's exploration of the Framers' views about the "role of corporations in society" to be misleading, and even if valid, irrelevant to the text. Scalia principally argued that the First Amendment was written in "terms of speech, not speakers" and that "Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker."[29] Scalia argued that the Free Press clause was originally intended to protect the distribution of written materials and did not only apply to the media specifically. This understanding supported the majority's contention that the Constitution does not allow the Court to separate corporations into media and non-media categories.[24]

 

[piezoe]

wait a second here... while I agree there is too much money buying our politicians on the left and right... Kennedy wrote the opinion in citizens united not Scalia.

In his concurrence Scalia was concerned about the govt picking some groups over others. I think the issue was that Unions could still buy politicians but corporations could not. I can see how you would label that anti Democratic (as in the party), but I don't see that as being democracy.

In his concurrence Scalia wrote...

Justice Scalia joined the opinion of the Court, but also wrote a concurring opinion which was joined by Justice Alito in full and by Justice Thomas in part. Scalia addressed Justice Stevens' dissent, specifically with regard to the original understanding of the First Amendment. Scalia stated that Stevens' dissent was "in splendid isolation from the text of the First Amendment...It never shows why 'the freedom of speech' that was the right of Englishmen did not include the freedom to speak in association with other individuals, including association in the corporate form." He further considered the dissent's exploration of the Framers' views about the "role of corporations in society" to be misleading, and even if valid, irrelevant to the text. Scalia principally argued that the First Amendment was written in "terms of speech, not speakers" and that "Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker."[29] Scalia argued that the Free Press clause was originally intended to protect the distribution of written materials and did not only apply to the media specifically. This understanding supported the majority's contention that the Constitution does not allow the Court to separate corporations into media and non-media categories.[24]

Exactly. That jovial reprobate Scalia never tired of concurring with Citizens. He was incapable of admitting the disaster he and his majority opinion colleagues had visited upon our weakened vestiges of democracy. In his passion for Originalism, or now suddenly Textualism, whenever Originalism did not serve his purpose, he became blind to the fact that it was 2010; not 1792.

I imagine that all the other Justices will miss the life he brought to the Court, and at the same time be oh so glad he is gone. They will no longer have to suffer his insults. Justice Thomas may be the one exception.

If there is an open coffin funeral, I hope someone from the Court will have the decency to hide his head in a bag.

 

[jem]

Jovial Reprobate? How is Scalia a reprobate.... your team starting with bill clinton on naked island and the international bankers who beat up prostitutes seem to be the reprobates.

now to the constitution... never tired of concurring. I think you need to catch up on Legal lexicon.

but... is wrong to find that it would be wrong to allow unions to buy politicians but not coporations?

I think that a well written law designed to keep money out of politics which did not discriminate against corporations in favor of unions... might have a much better chance of being found to be constitutional.

In fact I hope such a law could be written.

 

[piezoe]

You may be getting overwrought , Jem. No need. We agree that neither unions nor corporations have first amendment rights. Only individual citizens, speaking as individual citizens, have those rights. That surely is the only rational reading of the Constitution. Ergo, we shall overcome -- Oh sorry, I got a bit carried away, I am stuck here in the Heart of Dixie after all. We shall overturn Citizens in the next Court, and be done with this insanity. Then you can live happily ever after, and so can I.

 

[Arnie]

Exactly. That jovial reprobate Scalia never tired of concurring with Citizens. He was incapable of admitting the disaster he and his majority opinion colleagues had visited upon our weakened vestiges of democracy. In his passion for Originalism, or now suddenly Textualism, whenever Originalism did not serve his purpose, he became blind to the fact that it was 2010; not 1792.

I imagine that all the other Justices will miss the life he brought to the Court, and at the same time be oh so glad he is gone. They will no longer have to suffer his insults. Justice Thomas may be the one exception.

If there is an open coffin funeral, I hope someone from the Court will have the decency to hide his head in a bag.

Exactly what part of Citizens do you disagree with?

 

[fhl]

Is Scalia The Best Supreme Court Justice Of All Time?
By STACI ZARETSKY / Nov 19, 2015

"The fact of the matter is, you wake up in 100 years and most people are not going to know most of our names. I think that is really not the case with Justice Scalia, whom I think is going to go down as one of the most important, most historic figures on the Court."

-Elena Kagan, offering her thoughts on the justice she believes will be the most well-remembered out of all of her SCOTUS colleagues, during a recent speaking engagement at Harvard Law School.

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The seat should remain empty for at least a year to show respect for what may be the greatest supreme court justice of all time. We owe it to him.

 

[piezoe]

Is Scalia The Best Supreme Court Justice Of All Time?
By STACI ZARETSKY / Nov 19, 2015

"The fact of the matter is, you wake up in 100 years and most people are not going to know most of our names. I think that is really not the case with Justice Scalia, whom I think is going to go down as one of the most important, most historic figures on the Court."

-Elena Kagan, offering her thoughts on the justice she believes will be the most well-remembered out of all of her SCOTUS colleagues, during a recent speaking engagement at Harvard Law School.

-------------

The seat should remain empty for at least a year to show respect for what may be the greatest supreme court justice of all time. We owe it to him.

Nonsense!

 

[jem]

Your soros like leftist hatred for the rule of law and the constitution is showing.

Nonsense!

 

[piezoe]

Exactly what part of Citizens do you disagree with?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ice_kennedy_has_paved_the_way_for_the_re.html

I started to respond in specific detail, but I turned up this Slate article which already summarizes the complex path taken to get to the present fiasco. (Citizens was just the icing on the cake.) Citizens is a complex case that hinges critically on a tangled web of illogicality. The present political campaign funding fiasco, I believe, really had its roots in Buckley. (Buckley delineates, for the first time, between spending and contributions. You might have naively thought they were the same thing, as I once naively did.) And Buckley, which conflates spending with speech, leads ultimately to Citizens.

My view is that a fundamental error, an error on which almost all the chaos now rests, was made by the Court when it ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that individual spending limits imposed "substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech...", and therefore, by extension, certain kinds of spending is protected by the First Amendment. THAT is where I believe the problem lies. My view, in contradistinction to the Court's view, is that Spending is NOT speech. Spending in political campaigns, individual spending and contributions, both, should be restricted by statute, and such restriction should in no way constitute a violation of our First Amendment rights. The Court in Buckley, by the way, was OK with Contribution limits -- go figure!, but again, it's in Buckley where the Court separates "individual spending," where you decide how your "speech money" gets spent, from "contributions," where someone else decides. If none of this makes any sense at all to you, don't worry, that just means your sane...