WATCH irresponsible Scalia admit he thinks RPGs may be allowed under #2a #wtf https://t.co/11U7gPwQTk #gunsense #UniteBlue #p2
— US Gun Violence (@usgunviolence6) December 4, 2015
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.
I’ve written previously about my (entirely reasonable, IMHO) decision not to take joy from the passing of Antonin Scalia. I saw (and continue to see) no reason why the death of a person- no matter how odious and objectionable they may have been- should be cause for celebration.
(Disclaimer: If you’re a member of the LGBT community, you have more cause than you probably know what to do with and are absolutely justified in celebrating Scalia’s death. You get a free pass; knock yourself out.)
While the ending of a person’s time on this Earth shouldn’t necessarily be cause for celebration, the legacy left by such a person is, and should be, fair game. Antonin Scalia’s impact- the legacy of disrespect, hatred, exclusion, and intolerance he leaves behind- was considerable and deleterious to the interests of a class of people who wish for nothing more than to be treated as fully equal citizens.
It’s with Scalia’s legacy that those of us who believe in the rule of law- not law as interpreted through an ideological filter- have the biggest problem. The body of work left behind by Scalia after 30 years on the Supreme Court is a legacy highlighted by an inflexibly and irredeemably arch-Conservative viewpoint rooted in a hyper-moralistic picket-fence America that existed only in his vivid imagination. Sadly for America, being a troglodyte was, in Scalia’s case, no impediment to obtaining a lifetime sinecure on the nation’s highest court.
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….
But it was in his jurisprudence that Scalia most self-consciously looked to the past. He pioneered “originalism,” a theory holding that the Constitution should be interpreted in line with the beliefs of the white men, many of them slave owners, who ratified it in the late eighteenth century.
Antonin Scalia was neither a great scholar, a great legal mind, nor even a particularly decent human being…at least in the public sense. He was exactly the sort of reliably Far Right-wing ideologue Ronald Reagan was looking for to solidify his relationship with hard-core Conservatives. The Gipper’s calculation extended no further than the political points nominating Scalia would score for him with Conservatives. His record as a jurist was almost beside the point. How could it have been otherwise? Even the most cursory examination of his record would have revealed a legal temperamentally unsuited and completely unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court.
A jurist with an enduring disdain for the separation of Church and State and the cause of equal treatment under the law, Scalia’s mindset was more reminiscent of a plantation owner than a Supreme Court justice charged with fairly and dispassionately deciding matters relating to the law. It wasn’t about fairness or even the rule of law. For Scalia, who felt no need to hide his disdain for those he found objectionable, it was about enshrining a deeply and intolerantly Conservative philosophy as the law of the land.
Scalia described himself as an advocate of judicial restraint, who believed that the courts should defer to the democratically elected branches of government. In reality, he lunged at opportunities to overrule the work of Presidents and of legislators, especially Democrats. Scalia helped gut the Voting Rights Act, overturn McCain-Feingold and other campaign-finance rules, and, in his last official act, block President Obama’s climate-change regulations. Scalia’s reputation, like the Supreme Court’s, is also stained by his role in the majority in Bush v. Gore. His oft-repeated advice to critics of the decision was “Get over it.”….
In…his jurisprudence, he showed that he lived within the sealed bubble of contemporary conservative thought.
Scalia’s absence will be mourned by those on the Far Right who care for nothing save their own narrow self-interest and moral/theological/ideological framework. For most of America- or at least those who care enough to examine such things- Scalia’s legacy is one of almost unimaginable damage of the sort that may well take decades to undo. By that criteria, we are well rid of him…for he can no longer do any more damage to the cause of equal treatment under the law. To Antonin Scalia, the only people entitled to fair and equal treatment under the law are heterosexual White Conservative Christians. All others need not apply.
Americans should celebrate the good news that despite Scalia’s best effort, his success at turn back the clock of American jurisprudence wasn’t complete:
[E]ven though Scalia led a conservative majority on the Court for virtually his entire tenure, he never achieved his fondest hopes—thanks first to O’Connor and then to Kennedy. Roe v. Wade endures. Affirmative action survives. Obamacare lives. Gay rights are ascendant; the death penalty is not. (These positions are contingent, of course, and cases this year may weaken the Court’s resolve.)
Antonin Scalia may have been to some a peach of a person. He may have been adored by friends and family. As a jurist, Scalia should neither be well-regarded nor long-remembered. His attitudes and votes set the rule of law back years, in some cases perhaps even generations. That’s not a legacy to be proud of; that’s wreckage in desperate need of being cleared and disposed of in order that progress may finally be made.
With the help of a Democratic President (which looks likely) and the return of a Democratic-majority Congress (not so much), there’s hope that the restoration of a Liberal-majority Supreme Court will put a nail in the coffin of Far Right-wing judicial oppression. Time will tell, of course, but at least there’s hope…which is something that most definitely will NOT be part of Scalia’s legacy.
It’s time to begin undoing the damage.
