Antonin Scalia says, "...it would be absurd to say you couldn't, I don't know, stick something under the fingernail, smack him in the face."

btw the history of "simple-minded" men becoming associate justices on our Supreme Court is vast and unsurprising -- most of them ARE hacks. Scalia at least writes entertaining opinions.

he can write really well, which makes him seem appealing if good writing is an opiate to you like it is to me, but on balance he seems immune to arguments about human beings having dignity - complex maybe, but a bad apple

It was an opiate when I was younger. But Orwell's right: sooner or later the writing will reveal its author's chicanery and dissembling.

btw I'd rather have a Scalia on the Court -- an articulate defender of a certain kind of conservatism -- than a Harriet Meiers, who WAS a hack.

FWIW, he actually dissented from the opinion in the case I was reading, and ended up opposing the other three million dollar douches.

Whoa embarrassment re chief justice

As pointed out, Scalia is an associate justice. John Roberts is the Chief Justice.

Where I went to school, Scalia opinions caused the "Turn that shit up!!That's my JAM!" type reaction from my classmates - a conservative law school in DC. They were all very aware of what Jowls McEgo represented - a talented legal mind and writer who had a TON of chutzpah on the bench, and was a conservative with an attitude to boot.

I wish I had paid more attention to who was writing the opinions so that I might go and find a few choice quotes from him. He's really very good, and quite persuasive - but a total douche if you actually look at what he's saying.

For what its worth, one of my professors who clerked for another justice said that Scalia was a pretty entertaining guy to have contact with, and that his clerks, liberal and conservative, all got along with him very, very well.

His best friend – and tennis partner – on the Court is Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

let's interrogate Scally

I guess I appreciate the fact that he at least says "I don't know" about some questions. But the "bomb under LA" scenario really sticks in my craw. It's a little like saying "If there was a full-scale alien invasion of the earth, you'd probably support removing some checks and balances and giving the president greater power. But where do you draw the line?"

Ruth Ginsberg still plays tennis? Way to go older person.

so does Stevens!

Back to the Scalia surprise file. Remember Hamdi vs Rumsfeld:

ustice Antonin Scalia's dissent, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, went the furthest in restricting the Executive power of detention. Scalia asserted that based on historical precedent, the government had only two options to detain Hamdi: either Congress must suspend the right to habeas corpus (a power provided for under the Constitution only in times of "invasion" or "rebellion"), which hadn't happened; or Hamdi must be tried under normal criminal law. Scalia wrote that the plurality, though well meaning, had no basis in law for trying to establish new procedures that would be applicable in a challenge to Hamdi's detention—it was only the job of the Court to declare it unconstitutional and order his release or proper arrest, rather than to invent an acceptable process for detention.

ginsberg and scalia on an elephant:

http://www.oyez.org/tour/rbg-room/rbg_elephant/elephant.jpg

to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles

to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles
to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles
to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles
to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles
to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles
to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles
to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles
to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles

to find out where the bandits are hiding pore sally jones

He sided without reservation with the "liberal" side of the Court in 1989 against making flag-burning unconstitutional, and there's some precedent for his contempt for the law as written.

isn't this because he's basically a libertarian? also this is pretty funny:

He noted that in 1989 he voted to strike down the conviction of a man who had burned the American flag, on the ground that the First Amendment protected such symbolic acts. "Scalia did not like to vote that way," he said, slipping into the third person, as he often does during comic riffs. "He does not like sandal-wearing bearded weirdos who go around burning flags. He is a very conservative fellow." Although originalists are not supposed to care about the outcome, an originalist's wife, evidently, might sometimes consider this a crock. Scalia went on, "I came down to breakfast the next morning, and my wife--she's a very conservative woman--she was scrambling eggs and humming 'It's a Grand Old Flag.' That's a true story. I don't need that! A living-Constitution judge never has to suffer that way."

I like the idea of all these elderly judges playing tennis together (and having just looked her up I see that Ginsberg isn't quite as old as I thought she was - 74 though - pretty spry!) but it worries me too. The liberal ones should be taking it easy, can't afford to lose any more.

and yeah i think he's pretty funny, and i'm glad he rides elephants and plays tennis and all, but i wish he wouldn't say dumb shit like this

he would probably argue that torture is not "punishment" because you haven't actually been convicted yet.

ughhhhhhhhhhhh

-- tehresa, Wednesday, 13 February 2008 06:54 (7 hours ago) Link

This is precisely what he said.

Am I the only one that actually heard the whole interview? It was on NPR yesterday.

how likely is it that authorities will know with certainty that there is a bomb about to blow up los angeles but not know where it is??

i know, it's a hard question to answer because such a thing has NEVER EVEN REMOTELY HAPPENED

You mean 24 is a lie? ;_;

yeah i think context is key here, from the ABC blog:

But in the interview, it's Scalia who seems to be taking folks to task--venting about people who make quick moral judgments about torture without considering the hard hypotheticals. The choice made, he suggested to the BBC reporter, depends on the circumstances. As he said in Canada last year, if law enforcement knows a terrorist has a nuclear bomb and is going to blow up LA, the American people would find that a pretty clear case. You can hear the full interview here.

"Seems to me you have to say, as unlikely as that is, it would be absurd to say that you can't stick something under the fingernails, smack them in the face. It would be absurd to say that you couldn't do that. And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game," he told the BBC interviewer. "How close does the threat have to be, and how severe can an infliction of pain be?"

He then explains what a tough call that would be.

"There are no easy answers involved, in either direction, but I certainly know you can't come in smugly and with great satisfaction and say, 'Oh, this is torture, and therefore it's no good,'" he said. "You would not apply that in some real-life situations. It may not be a ticking bomb in Los Angeles, but it may be, 'Where is the group that we know is plotting this painful action against the United States? Where are they? What are they currently planning?'"

i know, it's a hard question to answer because such a thing has NEVER EVEN REMOTELY HAPPENED

The terrorists have lulled you to sleep with the six and a half years of relative peace in this country. Good thing we have tennis playing, jowly, bulldog looking Supreme Court justices who are still paying attention.

Apparently, there is a basketball court directly above the actual courtroom that the clerks play on all the time. Obv, not while court is in session.

why does scalia and every other neo-tard put violent POLITICAL crime in this separate, special category??

Obv, not while court is in session.

What fun is that!

Every pithy and erudite comment about never really knowing what someone else is thinking and how some of your closest friends probably have opinions you would find reprehensible is being drowned underneath a massive "wau cock" reaction to this story.

boo freakin hoo

Surely I'm not the only person dying to know what opinions of Ned's that Dan finds reprehensible.

Well, there's the whole kittenshoes thing.

kittenshoes is torture

http://www.musikmarkt-wiesbaden.de/images/JACKSONS%20torture%20LP.JPG

whoa i remember that sleeve! very duran duran

My constitutional views on kittenshoes have evolved while in office.

Every pithy and erudite comment about never really knowing what someone else is thinking and how some of your closest friends probably have opinions you would find reprehensible is being drowned underneath a massive "wau cock" reaction to this story.

What does that have to do with anything? The main issue here isn't that people have weird ideas.

Here's Antonin playing his favorite game, Scalia vs Texas:

http://planetsean.blogspot.com/ScaliaDelay.jpg

Apparently the main issue here is that people like to freak out over stuff they disagree with that sounds a bazillion times worse when taken out of context.

Antonin Scalia, it would be absurd to say you couldn't, I don't know, stick something under the fingernail, smack him in the face.

the frustrating thing about scalia is that he is nothing if not internally consistent. all those views expressed above really are rooted in a very strict and literal interpretation of the constitution. hence, torture isn't punishment because it's associated with a conviction under law. in the same interview he said that smacking around people that are already in jail would be awful and unconstitutional.

not looking abroad for legal insight is also part and parcel of his chosen reading; if all the answers are contained within the founding document, why on earth would you look to europe or where ever for assistance or influence?

i think this is why his opinions are so entertaining to read (he really IS a great writer): because he's arguing from a very entrenched and reductionist position, it's very easy for him to frame every problem within the constraints of a strict interpretation. if the practical implications of his reading are messy or immoral or unethical or whatever, who gives a shit? it's not his job to worry about that. or at least that's how i think he sees it.

Like what if we just reaaaaally need to sway him on an upcoming decision? i mean those can have hueg consequences for our nations future right?

What drives me crazy is the smug assumption that no one else has done the intellectual/moral heavy lifting WRT torture. That by "bravely" facing the fact that extreme situations might demand unusual (even illegal) responses, the pro-torture folks are going where no man has gone before. It's an absurd and condescending premise.

We all know that you can't always draw a clean line between right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. But we have to draw the line somewhere. That's what the rule of law is all about. Scalia basically seems to be arguing against the rule of law, arguing that even the most basic human rights and protections may be suspended when expedient. It calls into question the entire premise of the Constitution. The fact that it's framed as Constitutional literalism is just the final insult.

its not like ive convicted him of anything!

if the practical implications of his reading are messy or immoral or unethical or whatever, who gives a shit? it's not his job to worry about that.

Yeah, I think this nails it.

On that note, GBX OTM.

Apparently the main issue here is that people like to freak out over stuff they disagree with that sounds a bazillion times worse when taken out of context.

Out of context nothing. It sounds just as bad in context.

Actually it doesn't, but whatever.

ANTONIN SCALIA, THE GREEN GOBLIN HAS SUSPENDED A SUBWAY CAR OVER THE HUDSON

EVERYONE IN THE CAR WILL DIE UNLESS YOU PERSONALLY MACHINE-GUN ONE CUTE BABY WITHIN FIVE MINUTES

WHAT DO YOU DO??? OMG

if Scalia were a Marvel villain he wouldn't even need a villain name – "Scalia" is just fine.

TO TAKE A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE: IF SOME HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WERE PLANNING SUCH A SUBWAY-CAR SUSPENSION SCENARIO, TAKING CUTE-BABY-MACHINE-GUNNING OFF THE TABLE WOULD LEAD TO THE DEATHS OF MANY MORE INNOCENT PEOPLE AND PROPERTY DAMAGES RUNNING INTO THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS

it doesn't take the bbc's unfavorable editing to turn this into another quiet disaster in international relations

very expansive view of what can be done to a suspect if someone, somewhere, thinks there is danger? check. very cramped and nationalistic view of how law relates to justice, fairness, and human dignity? check.

Actually it doesn't, but whatever.

I understand not wanting to debate the point, but that's just a cop out. I've read the transcript. Scalia's views are in no way misrepresented or even dumbed-down in the article linked. They're mocked, but that's it.

God I made this thread all geeky

thank you

Again, this is not analogous to Padilla's situation, in part because he wasn't part of an invading force, and in part because he wasn't acting as an agent of a foreign government in a time of war. The Bush Admin. has also argued that because Al Queda isn't a foreign government that the laws of war don't apply to any of their associates; you can sort of see where this leads.

Forgive my denseness -- and my reluctance to wade through the legal thickets of Hamdan -- but did the Court in 2004 use the Bush administration's own logic against it?

er, I meant HAMDI

that's a great post J, and it seems to highlight the central legal strategy of the Bush administration which is "the usual rules don't apply" (but of course there are no other rules to substitute so we get to make them up as we go along yay!)

a great SET of posts, I should say

I don't think so . . . what do you mean, specifically?

Handy chart:

Hamdi - citizen, captured on foreign soil
Hamdan - noncitizen, captured on foreign soil
Padilla - citzen, captured in U.S.

Also important to your question (I think): Rasul v. Bush, which dealt with the question of whether Gitmo was a U.S. controlled area sufficient to allow foreign nationals to invoke U.S. federal jurisdiction to issue a writ of habeas corpus. Scalia dissented vehemently, arguing that Gitmo was not part of the U.S., that the petitioners were non citizens, and that therefore the habeas couldn't issue because U.S. courts had no jurisdiction.

Clear as mud, right?

(xpost, thanks!)

(Note that many of the questions we thought had been answered by Rasul are being heard again this term in Boumediene v. Bush -- god knows how that's going to turn out)

I don't think so . . . what do you mean, specifically?

This was directed at Alfred, btw.

I mean that in every one of these cases I see a pattern of attempting to create a kind of legal no-man's land

oh, ok nevermind

I mean that in every one of these cases I see a pattern of attempting to create a kind of legal no-man's land

Oh yeah, that's the whole point. That's why we have Gitmo--it's the one place in the world where no law applies. Scalia's Rasul dissent spends a lot of time talking about "sovereignty," and at the oral arguments in Boumediene he got really annoying on the subject, but the bottom line w/r/t that issue is that if U.S. law doesn't even in a limited way there, then everything that the Bush Admin. does there is fine. I mean, is Castro gonna stop 'em? During the Boumediene oral argument there was all this discussion of the lease between the U.S. and Cuba relating to Gitmo . . . to the average listener, it was pretty surreal.

It's noteworthy that they didn't try to take Padilla to Gitmo. It's also noteworthy that once the Bush Administration discovered that Hamdi was a citizen, they whisked him out of Gitmo and put him in a military prison in Virginia. At a result, Scalia had no problem at all with Hamdi's habeas petition, even though he was captured on foreign soil.

and the admin also tends to favor people who are skeptical of the very idea of "international law," no?

anthony kennedy believes in the idea of international law, and it was his vote that but the 5 in the 5-4 Bush Gore decision. you could go around and around and around with this shit but why get worked up about it? yes, bush and addington and cheney are making up the laws about terror as they go; what about this surprises you?

anthony kennedy believes in the idea of international law, and it was his vote that but the 5 in the 5-4 Bush Gore decision.

not sure what the connection is between part one of this sentence and part two

kennedy is part of the admin--helped usher in the admin. i'm sure there are plenty of people in the admin who look to international law. so what?

"what about this surprises you?" is the most common response to anything said about the Bush administration on any thread on this board. The point isn't whether it's "surprising." Obviously nothing is "surprising" by now Incidentally, sometimes I feel like ILX is primarily an original opinions contest, which isn't really the most useful means of discussing an issue -- not that I'm particularly blaming you for this Que.

I'm not saying "No one in this administration believes in international law." And since Kennedy OBVIOUSLY was not a Bush appointee, I don't see what you're getting at.

What I'm trying to say is that on the one hand the administration often takes a legal strategy of placing things outside the context of U.S. law, and that on the other hand it tends to put international law in ironic quotes, thus creating the no-mans land I'm talking about.

kennedy is part of the admin--helped usher in the admin

also sorry to chain-post but this is just silly

they're not putting int'l in ironic quotes. they're mostly ignoring it. those are two separate concepts.

there are probably a few people in the admin who give a shit about int'l law. that's all i'm saying.

kennedy is a firm believer in international law. it's pretty much him who we can thank for getting us into this mess in the first place. that's all i was saying and i realize it's an overreach.

that's all i was saying and i realize it's an overreach.

LOL this should be on the ILX Crest of Arms^^

WHO cares if the Guantamano Six were tortured?

Not me, that’s for sure, but you would have thought that the world had ended the way some of the Press reported the fact that, at long last, those accused of being the masterminds behind 9/11 were going to be tried.

They talked about kangaroo courts and acted as if these six were only on trial for shoplifting, not the cold-blooded murder of 3,000 innocents.

When will the ruling liberal elite realise we are at war with an enemy that isn’t fighting by the Queensberry rules and certainly doesn’t respect the Geneva Convention.

I wish the Yanks hadn’t used waterboarding to get the confessions but, I’m sorry, these are extraordinary times and they demand extraordinary methods.

If the liberals want to talk about the horrors of torture they should listen to the answerphone messages of the passengers on the planes as they careered into the World Trade Center, or remember the pictures of people who chose to jump rather than be burned alive. That was torture. That was pain. That was injustice.

This isn’t a game, this is war.

These madmen don’t give a warning when they are going to fly planes into buildings. The nutters of 7/7 didn’t phone the police before they pulled the strings on their rucksacks and now is not the time for social niceties and manners. Now is the time to fight fire with fire.

-- Jon Gaunt in the Sun

Nino's interview with Lesley Stahl

Weeklong series of interviews of Scalia by Peter Robinson.

Not sure if I can bring myself to watch him interviewed by someone likely supportive already of Scalia's views.

To quote Frank Black, it's educational.

The interviewer is not that bad. He asks some decent questions, although certainly doesn't grill Scalia as much as I'd like.

I found the part II very revealing, actually. Scalia likes his Constitutional Law philosophy because it provides certainty and protects him from coping with scary change.