Just so there is no misunderstanding, I thought him a despicable jurist. The Onion's headline - "Scalia Dies After Thirty Years of Impeding Social Progress" - is sad and true.
Here's a first-person item from Facebook that deserves to be widespread; what a shame this didn't come up in his confirmation hearings.
Here's musicologist Jonathan Bellman dissecting a particularly horrifying comment Scalia made from the bench, and another post in which he discusses truly great scholarship at a "non-elite" university.
All sympathies to his friends, family, and colleagues, of course, but his record as a public servant is open to, and deserving of, great criticism.
Your first two links go to the same Facebook post.
ReplyDeleteWhen Patricia Williams testified at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings she stressed Thomas' explicit rejection of statistical evidence to show "pattern and practice" of discrimination, even where there's no direct evidence of intent to discriminate. Her testimony was drowned out by the Anita Hill thing--Hill testified a day or two after Williams--but I think it's interesting that if a statistical test had been applied to Scalia's grading practices he might never have made it onto the Court.
The links are fixed now.
ReplyDeleteJustice Scalia was a despicable tool. His attitude towards anyone who was not a conservative male makes was that of a patronizing egoist. His jurisprudence, original intent, is horrendously rigid and another example of his egoism. His understanding of the "text" required that he know what was in the mind of the founders, without bothering to read what they said about their intent. Strangely, it resulted in decisions that were indistinguishable from his political convictions. Imagine that.
ReplyDeleteHowever what sealed my abhorrence for this boil of man d is his belief that factual innocence was not grounds for overturning a capital conviction. So long as the process was followed, it mattered not one whit that the defendant was innocent.
I have read in the last day or so that his claim about the death penalty was more nuanced than "who cares if they're innocent,' but I did not read the linked-to story on that....
ReplyDeleteAndrew Revkin's blog (Dot Earth) in the Times today has some zingers too.
ReplyDeletehttp://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/a-look-back-justice-scalia-on-co2-and-why-the-e-p-a-isnt-the-atmospheric-protection-agency/?ref=opinion&_r=0