Antonin Scalia believes Supreme Court justices are all too often deciding the nation's morals from the bench.
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He said the Supreme Court should abandon the notion of a "living constitution" — an approach the court adopted in the last half of the 20th century that has resulted in the nation's charter being rewritten time and again by unelected judges who are unqualified to make decisions on morality.
Instead, the court should go back to the time when the constitution and the meaning of laws were considered static and could only be changed by an amendment of the people, he said.
The modern court's "living constitution" doctrine has resulted in the Supreme Court acting as moral arbiters for the nation, he said.
Friday, July 30, 2010
"Scalia: Supreme Court should not be moral arbiters"
AP Yahoo! News on a speech by Justice Scalia this week at Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies.
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2 comments:
Scalia's not above bending precedent when it suits his purposes, but there is something ludicrous about an assumption that lawyers are more qualified than the average schmo on the street to make moral and ethical decisions for said schmo and the rest of the populace.
I believe Scalia would argue that bending precedent is a good thing if it results in a more originalist outcome. But I know what you mean - that beyond that, he's not above arriving at non-originalist outcomes from time to time. And I know that Scalia acknowledges that his original understanding approach can't prevent all incidents of a judge's personal preferences influencing judicial decision-making. But he argues, and studies confirm, that his approach at least reduces the extent to which judges can reach outside of the law for justifications.
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