Antonin Scalia

Overview

Antonin Scalia is one of the eight Associate Justices of the US Supreme Court; appointed by Ronald Reagan, he assumed office on 1986-09-26.

Views

• Very conservative ("widely regarded as the intellectual anchor of the Court's conservative wing" -- Wikipedia)
• on the Constitution:
  • Believes in literal, or textual, interpretation of the Constitution, rather than attempting to follow its intent
  • Believes the Constitution has (or perhaps should have) a fixed nature, rather than being considered a "living" document which can change in response to the changing needs of those it governs
• Approves of national power and a strong executive (i.e. president), as opposed to states' rights
• Is a member of the Roman Catholic church; his views with respect to this, and to how he believes other Roman Catholics should behave, seem somewhat contradictory at best.

Religious Influence

Scalia expressed, at a forum in 2002, many of his views on how religion should influence politics. Although he stated initially that he wanted "to make clear at the outset of my remarks that what I will have to say ... has nothing to do with how I vote in capital cases that come before the Supreme Court", it seems unclear how those views as he has explained them could fail to have a great deal with how he votes in those cases.

He also added later in the same session: "You’re talking about whether the religious viewpoint should have a role in the legislative and political process. Of course it should." Clarification of the relationship between this remark and his earlier statement is needed, at the very least.

Further analysis and discussion seems warranted.

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia
• Conservapedia
• dKosopedia
• SourceWatch

Articles & Opinion

• 2007-07-17 Oh those moral fundamentalists by D.C. Simpson
• 2002-07-15
  • I'd like to paint a picture for you
  • Whoa! That Antonin Scalia Is One Mega Scary Unrighteous Dude, Man! by Brad DeLong (blog entry with extensive reader comments) : points out, among other things, that the government praised by St. Paul in Romans (as quoted by Scalia) is the same government that Gibbon was writing about in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• 2002-07-08 From Justice Scalia, a Chilling Vision of Religion's Authority in America (alt) by Sean Wilentz, the New York Times (references Session 3 transcript below)

Transcripts

• 2002-01-25 Session 3: Religion, Politics, and the Death Penalty features speeches by Antonin Scalia, former US Senator Paul Simon, and Beth Wilkinson (Prosecutor, Oklahoma City bombing trials; Co-Chair, The Constitution Project's Death Penalty Initiative), followed by a considerable amount of dialogue between those three and the moderator. (Related: death penalty)