Justice Scalia v. ACLU's Medusa

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia faced off with ACLU president Nadine Strossen, who strikes a surprising semblance to Medusa by the way, on Sunday to debate the role of the Supreme Court on various issues.

Scalia never ceases to impress...


From the AP:

Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the high court, sparred in a one-hour televised debate with American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen. He said unelected judges have no place deciding politically charged questions when the Constitution is silent on those issues.

I think by and large Scalia has been more adherent to the Constitution than most Justices, and here's why:

During Sunday's debate, Scalia outlined his judicial philosophy of interpreting the Constitution according to its text, as understood at the time it was adopted. He reiterated that race has no place in school admissions, a viewpoint that put him on the losing side in 2003.

"The Constitution very clearly forbids discrimination on the basis of race," Scalia said in response to a question by moderator Pete Williams of NBC. "It doesn't seem to me to allow Michigan to say we think it's good to discriminate on the basis of race when you want to make sure everyone is exposed to different backgrounds. We cannot use race as the test of diversity."

Once we begin to interpret documents differently from their original meaning, we begin to diminish the significance of those documents, effectually transforming them into an abstraction. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer a house built on stone, rather than sand.