Judge Richard Posner skewers Justice Antonin Scalia’s so-called originalism

In his recent detailed article published in The New Republic, "The Incoherence of Antonin Scalia," Judge Richard Posner has taken United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's theory of textual originalism to task. Yes, this article presents an extended series of technical legal analyses, but it is written in a way that many lay readers can appreciate. It should be read by anyone who wants to understand the repeated protestations by Justice Scalia that when he rules on case, he is doing so by rigorously paying attention to the actual words of enacted laws. [More . . . ]

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Scalia’s thought process: “Well, he probably did something else wrong anyway.”

Way back in 1989, I happened to be watching Episode Two of a PBS series entitled "Ethics in America." It was a terrific 10-part series that considered compelling topics in ethics. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was a participant in Episode Two. You can see all of the episodes, including Episode Two here (click on the little "VoD" button next to Episode 2). You might be wondering how I could possibly remember a particular comment from a particular episode from 20 years ago. I do remember: it was burned into my memory because it was so utterly bizarre. At about the 31-minute mark, the moderator (Charles Ogletree, Jr.) posed a hypothetical. What if you were an attorney and your client told you that he committed a murder a couple years ago? The clear answer is that the attorney-client privilege protects that admission; if you were that man's attorney, you could not tell anyone else what your client told you in the course of your consultation with him. Things got much more interesting, as the moderator elaborated on the hypothetical. Assume that your client tells you that after he committed the murder, the police erroneously arrested the wrong man. Further, assume that man has been found guilty by a jury and he is scheduled to be executed. As the attorney, what can you do to protect the life of an innocent man who is about to be executed for a crime committed by your own client who is confessing his guilt to you? This is a tough issue, right? At the moment where the moderator indicated that the innocent man was about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit, Justice Scalia spoke up: "Well, he probably did something else wrong anyway." You can see and hear this statement for yourself at 31:50 in the video. Although I'm certain that Justice Scalia would claim that his utterance was a "joke," (after all, other participants laughed), it makes you wonder, especially in light of a recent case decided by the United States Supreme Court, In re Davis.

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Jeffrey Stone on originalism

In "Supreme Imbalance: Why Originalism and Conservative Activism Are Wrong," I think Jeffrey Stone has it about right in his Huffpo article on the jurisprudential doctrine that goes under the name of "originalism." With this mindset, the notion that any particular moment's conception of rights should be taken as exhaustive…

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