Debate Nirvana

The most obvious example where Scalia proved he was a Constitutionalist and not motivated by political conservatism was in the most important free speech decision of the 1980s. In Texas v. Johnson, Scalia had the decisive vote that decided that flag burning was legal under the Constitution. Even though the conservative party clearly frowns upon this practice, and Scalia himself found flag burning disgraceful, Scalia stuck with the Constitution and voted in favor of free speech rights. Thus, Justice Scalia had the integrity to decide a case against his own personal beliefs. Scalia himself said,  “We don’t sit here to make the law, to decide who ought to win. We decide who wins under the law that the people have adopted. And very often, if you’re a good judge, you don’t really like the result you’re reaching.”

The biggest case where Scalia protected citizen's right to privacy was in his majority opinion in the Kyllo v United States case. Scalia wrote the majority opinion in a close 5-4 decision, where he concluded that police were not allowed to peep into homes with thermal-imaging devices. Scalia also wrote the majority opinion in Florida v. Jardines, another 5-4 decision, that barred police from entering private property with a drug-sniffing dog without a warrant. Additionally, in quite possibly his most important case regarding privacy, Scalia sided once again with citizen’s right to privacy. In Riley v California, Scalia voted against the government’s bid to warrantlessly search a modern-day cell phone acquired in the course of an arrest, meaning that Scalia actually set the precedent for all of our modern day cyber privacies that we take for granted.

By the time he wrote his most important majority opinion in 2008, finding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms, even the dissenters were engaged in trying to determine the original meaning of the Constitution, the approach he had championed.

According to the Washington Post, when ruling in a court case, Scalia said, “It does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well." This statement suggests that African-Americans are inherently less intelligent as people of other races, and as someone with such high status in the United States, his statements only further encourage white supremacists and racists to continue discriminating against racial minorities. When discussing the issue of equal rights of gay individuals, Scalia stated, “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?” Despite America being a place where equality among all is promoted, Scalia described homosexuality as awful as murdering another human being, which only encourages people to continue being homophobic.

Despite the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause clearly stating “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that this amendment did not protect against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.

As a Supreme Court justice, Scalia’s decisions will continue to influence future rulings even though he has passed. In a case where a corporation tried to influence the US Secretary of Agriculture by giving him over $6,000 worth of gifts, Scalia wrote the majority opinion that this was not bribery and corruption.  Scalia went on to suggest that using money to influence power through gifts is both inevitable and not troubling. This decision ultimately supported and validated corporations’ use of bribery to convince governmental officials to help them. This ultimately has very harmful effects for the future of the country because allowing governmental officials to receive bribes from corporations means that officials are not working in the interest of United States citizens, as they should, but rather, they are making decisions because of the money they receive from corporations.  The result of this case was the foundation for the more controversial and harmful ruling in Citizens United which ruled that companies should be viewed as people with a right of free speech. The result is that companies can give money freely to political campaigns and influence the outcome of elections. This case was harmful for the country because it substantially weakens corruption laws and allows a handful of billionaires to spend millions of dollars promoting their personal agendas.

Justice Scalia’s sometimes withering questioning helped transform what had been a sleepy bench when he arrived into one that Chief Justice Roberts has said has become too active, with the justices interrupting the lawyers and each other. 

Scalia once referred to another Justice’s opinion as "gobbledy-gook" and said his argument was "nonsense." Scalia has long relied on ridicule. In past years he has dismissed his colleagues' decisions as "nothing short of ludicrous" and "beyond absurd," "entirely irrational" and “not passing the most gullible scrutiny." He has called them "preposterous" and "so unsupported in reason and so absurd in application as unlikely to survive." In the case of Obergefell vs. Hodges, which struck down state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage, Scalia said that Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion was "as pretentious as its content is egotistic.” In a footnote to the case he likened the majority opinion to the "mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie."  This is clearly disrespectful to his colleagues and it is vital that the public respect the holdings of the Supreme Court.  Justice Scalia’s crass remarks undermine that respect and thus, his career has done more harm than good.