Slashdot Mirror
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Has Died (theguardian.com)
clovis writes: US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died in his sleep while on a hunting trip near Marfa, Texas. Justice Scalia was a Constitutional originalist and textualist. He did not believe the Constitution was a living document to be interpreted with the evolving standards of modern times.
I, for one, am very interested to see what happens next.
I, for one, am very interested to see what happens next.
Netcraft does not confirm it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Obama should word with rankng Senate members of both parties and nominate a politically-centrist judge whose judicial qualifications are impeccable.
The Democratic Party base will hate him for blowing an opportunity to name a liberal, and the Republican Party base will hate their party leaders for allowing Obama to fill the slot at all.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What is going to happen next is this: Obama will nominate someone and the Senate Republicans will do everything in their power to block it. Already, Cruz and Rubio have said as much -- that the next President should be the person to make the nomination, not Obama. Obama could nominate Rush Limbaugh and Senate Republicans would object. The only hope that there is for a reasonably speedy confirmation is for moderate -- or reasonable -- Republicans to, you know, do their jobs.
I'm sorry he died. It does look like he lead a long life doing what he loved. He was a lucky man in that regard.
I disagree with his policies strongly and hope we are able to replace him with a reasonable justice.
On a sort of unrelated note-- he was only 79! So keep that in mind for your retirement plans. Despite having some of the best health care in the world, most of us are dead by 82. And 98.4% are dead by age 90.
Try to retire early and take up a second career doing something you love doing. I love doing therapeutic massage for people in pain. I didn't hate being a project manager too much but it was unpleasant with long hours and holiday work and always just a way to make money.
I thought I'd be drawing and painting more than I have. But reading Splat the Cat says "Sorry" to my grandsons is priceless.
Scalia leaves behind a wife and nine children (unless some have died). Who knows how many grand children.
He looks overweight in recent photos. That might be a side effect of medication (ala Jerry Lewis) or it may have been something that contributed to his early death. Keep in mind that puff pastry or extra gravy might cost you a few years with your grand kids. Not to mention change the course of the country.
I mean wow. ~Ten more months and it might have been a conservative jurist who replaced him. Even with filibustering and so on, I think Obama will seat this one. If the conservatives actually filibuster for 10 months, I think the democrats should filibuster any conservative justice nominee until the end of the term.
Fun Supreme Court Factoids.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/fa...
Quote:
Has anyone ever served as both President and Chief Justice?
William Howard Taft is the only person to have served as both President of the United States (1909-1913) and Chief Justice of the United States (1921-1930).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It was long in coming, but in the end, I see the quail got their revenge.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
We will never really know that he was not accidentally shot by Dick Cheney
He was asking, from the bench, for the plaintiff's response to an amicus brief. The doesn't mean that he supported what the brief said.
I've got green eyes, red hair, and I'm left handed. A hundred years ago, I'd have been considered in league with the De
"Textualist" is how Scalia portrayed himself, but if you look at Shelby County vs Holder, where the Supreme Court struck down most of the Voting Rights Act, Scalia's arguments basically came down to the idea that he was a mind-reader about what Congress really wanted to do, but was not politically able to do, never mind the text. Other times, he disregarded the clear intent of the lawmakers in favor of the strict textual reading. But he was hardly consistent. He was a textualist when the text favored him, he ignored it when it didn't. And maybe that's not unique to him - I'm not saying he was unique in that respect, but let's not pretend he was intellectually consistent.
In the end, he was a Republican justice. Nothing more, nothing less.
Scalia was very controversial and much of the left will be likely happy about this. But he was a human being, and by most accounts he was a decent one and a smart one. His best friend on the Court was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is one of the most liberal justices. We should all take a lesson from them on being civil and friendly even with those we disagree with.
All he said was accepting people to tougher schools than their academic records justify, to fulfill an affirmative action quota, may be harder on them and less rewarding, in the end.
It's politically incorrect to say so, and he could have phrased it more carefully, but not at all racist. Everybody jumped at it to make their own political points with their base, knowing full well they were spouting crap. Of course, he still might have been a racist, but that doesn't prove it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
On a sort of unrelated note -- he was only 79! So keep that in mind for your retirement plans. Despite having some of the best health care in the world, most of us are dead by 82. And 98.4% are dead by age 90.
If you're lucky. My wife Sue died at 61 in Jan 2006 (I was 42 then). Other than the brain tumor that killed her just 7 weeks after diagnosis, she was in perfect health. She worked out with a trainer (cardio and weights) twice a week and walked several time a week. She was an English and Gifted Education teacher and was thinking of retiring in a few years.
I'm very, very grateful for the 20 years we had together. Remember Sue...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Not only that, so freakin what if he did. The black community is largely populated in dense urban environments ripe with gangs and notoriously bad schools (One teacher told me it was almost like holding school in a war zone at times and since he was a combat vet from Vietnam, I'll take his word for it).
Anyways, the situation is that many minorities do seem to come from tough environments and a slower pace could actually bring the talent out or nurture that talent that would let them shine above everyone else. I can see it as a net positive in some situations and probably a net negative in others. But admission due to your race and not qualifications or abilities will never foster this or weed out the differences.
He did not believe the Constitution was a living document to be interpreted with the evolving standards of modern times. And he was wrong. Then again, he pretty much made whatever argument that served his desired outcome, even if the argument contradicted his earlier opinions.
To reduce crime, make fewer things against the law.
I agree that it is not necessarily a racist comment, although it does have significant dog-whistle value.
The experience in New Zealand around affirmative action type quotas is that the students who get in on these quotas are equally capable with respect to completing their degree course. i.e. the grade average requirement is simply a way of filtering students, and is set so high that you can actually have lower grades and still pass the degree programme.
Scalia was a typical right-winger - strong on beg-the-question thought experiments, but a lightweight when it comes to actually doing the research *before* forming an opinion.
It's good luck to be superstitious
There are several very important cases coming up for the supreme court, including immigration, abortion, and unions. Any of these Supreme Court decisions that end up tied at 4-4 means that the lower court's decision will stand.
Nah.. The majority leader could just refuse to bring the confirmation up on this calendar and then do the same on the next. It is what Harry Reid did with legislation the house passed that he didn't want to bother with.
How do you know he didn't care about climate change?
Doing something that is illegal or unconstitutional does in no way all the sudden become good or correct just because you like the desired outcome. What he did was proper regardless of his views on climate change, Obama, or some treaty that isn't a treaty because the senate has to confirm all treaties for it to become a treaty.
As for Citizens United, I do not see any flaws in the ruling. Can you point them out? And no, businesses or corporations having political speech or money equals speech is not a flaw in the ruling. What constitutional basics is incorrect or flawed in it?
Then the Senate will drag this out till after the elections and Hillary appoints Obama.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
He did not believe the Constitution was a living document to be interpreted with the evolving standards of modern times. And he was wrong.
To the extent that he actually believed what you think he believed, he was right. If you can't muster support for a constitutional amendment, you have no business change the constitution in the name of reinterpretation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
| What constitutional basics is incorrect or flawed in it?
Natural born people have rights.
Corporations are entities which are created by human laws, and given privileges and responsibilities for the purpose of aiding society and economics. There is an economic segregation and legal liability segregation created artificially.
Therefore, it is proper that legislatures may regulate a corporation's expenditure of money owned by the corporation on political issues as it regulates its expenditure of money for all sorts of other purposes and regulates its tax liability.
They've only turned it into a political showdown for the last few decades, since Bork was nominated.
Says somebody who doesn't know the history.
Tyler would be the worst example, as he was a lame duck period, but Cleveland would be another clear example.
You're either ignorant of the topic, and falling for the inflammatory press coverage, or you're intentionally distorting the subject, yourself.
Scalia was merely making reference to a specific brief that had been submitted. The brief in question makes "mention of academic records" and discusses the favorability of various outcomes (for African American students, specifically) in-detail.
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
If he had said, "What's the name of that book, you were reading, about that black guy who killed somebody?" would you be calling him a racist, who apparently thinks all African Americans are murderers? It's absurd and utterly disingenuous.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
All he said was accepting people to tougher schools than their academic records justify, to fulfill an affirmative action quota, may be harder on them and less rewarding, in the end.
He said that as he glanced to his left.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
So in other words, there was absolutely nothing that you could find constitutionally or legally unsound about the argument (which BTW rested in part on a definition defined by congress), just that you do not like it because of your other views?
"I, for one, am very interested to see what happens next."
Nothing happens next, none of those cases that were up for decision including: deporting 5 million illegals, abortions, etc will be decided this year, and there's a good chance that 2 more may die soon (consider Ruth's age and frailty).
The Republicans will not allow Obama to appoint one in his term, they will block it until the next president.
And who ever is the next POTUS may get to decide up to 3 replacements.
So now is the time to really, really study who you want to vote for... or if you don't do that then please don't vote.
So vote for Bernie, because we know what Clinton is, and we know what the other candidates are.
More of the same sewage, so lets make it interesting (not in the Chinese curse sense) and put someone odd in there.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The Constitution evolves by amendments. It does not evolve because you want it to mean something entirely different.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The Ninth Amendment tells interpreters not to be like Scalia.
Modern civilization overall is dumber, and more diseased than it has ever been.
Can we get a source?
What I find unsound is the automatic conflation of corporations with people, when they are distinctly different.
Since corporations do not have any independent cognitive power or will, but act only that of the human managers, the true underlying question is not about free speech in reality, but whether managers may use corporate finances for overtly political purposes at their discretion.
I see no reason to suppose this use of finances should not be regulated by legislation the way other uses of finance is regulated.
Regulation of corporations should be left to legislatures, as they are for all sorts of things which do not apply to human citizens. Why can a legislature compel a corporation to produce certain accounting activities and products to others but doesn't make a person give a balance sheet to others? Is there anything wrong with this? No.
Here is a quote from the decision: "The First Amendment prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for engaging in political speech, but Austin ’s antidistortion rationale would permit the Government to ban political speech because the speaker is an association with a corporate form."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html
This is wrong. What was attempted to be banned is the corporate form paying money from corporate accounts at the direction of corporate management to engage in political speech. It would indeed be wrong if the ban were "spokespeople for public C corporations cannot donate (their own) money or speak at political events", but it is not.
That corporate form is similarly banned from paying money from corporate accounts at the direction of corporate management to individual's people's pocketbooks when such is against the normal business operations (i.e. embezzlement) expected and interests of shareholders. Nobody has a problem with this restriction on financial freedom.
It is a linguistic shortcut (saying that 'corporations speak') as if they were aware. It is necessary to be precise about the actual activity: "financial expenditures {including labor rendered with compensation} of a corporate account at the direction of management". Managers of corporations have different responsibilities with money than natural citizens with their own money.
I would accept single-person S corporations to be functionally equivalent to natural people.
That's interesting. I have a friend who's a really successful jazz bassist and makes a really good living doing session work. He went to study massage (shiatsu, etc) for the same reason. He says it has given him a renewed sense of purpose and has made his hands stronger and more dexterous, which is good for his bass playing. I was initially puzzled when he told me he was going to massage school, but now I get it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If corporations are people, then corporations owning corporations, or people owning corporations, must be unconstitutional under the 13th Amendment.
It is robustly clear that corporations are not people and do not possess Constitutional rights intrinsically, but only such rights and responsibilities granted by legislature.
You are wasting time playing with an obvious and flaming troll, but if you want to do that over Scalia, then you should start with Bush v Gore, a decision that was SO bad that even at the time they wrote it, they said that it should NOT be regarded as a legal precedent. As if setting precedent wasn't the main job of the so-called Supreme Court.
There are two aspects of Scalia that I find most interesting. One is how he became his own enemy. At least he claimed that "judicial activism" was a bad thing, only to become one of the most activist judges in the history of the court. His creative work on the Second Amendment was especially amazing in abusing and even destroying the intentions of the Founders he claimed to admire.
The other aspect was his voting power. As far as I know, there has never been a justice who had a shadow second vote like that of Clarence Thomas. Actually, this would be an easy topic to research, though the last part of it will have to wait until Thomas dies. (Gee, now there's a reason to hope Thomas lasts for at least a short while longer?) The votes of all of the Supreme Court justices could be correlated to see which justices vote the same way most often. It's probably already been done, now that we have these computer things, eh? I'm pretty sure that the correlation between Scalia and Thomas will be one of the highest ever recorded.
However, I can go farther and make a new prediction for Thomas without Scalia to tell him how to vote. I think Thomas will attach himself to some other justice, probably Alito if he is the most conservative replacement available, and now correlate extremely highly with that justice's votes. Whatever voting pattern signifies judicial leadership, I'm confident that Scalia's votes showed that pattern (even if he was leading in the wrong direction) and the votes of Thomas will never show such a pattern.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
It looks to me like Democrats/progressives/liberals are sitting pretty. The Republicans are down one Justice - let's call a spade a spade here - so as long as the seat remains empty the other side is that much better off. And ISTM that there's not much prospect that the next president will be Republican, and the Democrats may pick up a few Senate seats as well. So the smart Republicans may be well advised to get the best deal they can get now rather than putting it off. But the reactionary caucus will ensure that that doesn't happen.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
How do you know he didn't care about climate change?
[On Global Warming, in response to Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James Milkey's correction of Scalia's reference to the stratosphere]
Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.
Massachusetts vs. EPA, 05-1120 (30 November 2006).
More info here
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The GOP has control of the house and senate currently. Now they have yet another matter to be non-productive on as they hope (beyond reason) to be able to win the 2016 presidential election so they can keep Scalia's seat occupied by a conservative. When they overplay this hand they can expect the public to react negatively.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
People aren't looking very far ahead. Immediately all the GOP leaders said that they won't confirm a nomination, and many have asked Obama not to make a nomination. On the other hand, Obama immediately said that he will make a nomination. So, that's likely to be the first public thing to happen.
Obama will likely pick somebody with impeccable credentials, but more importantly, a toughness to survive 11 months of vitriolic attacks -- because he's going to insist that the nominee maintain his or her determination to be confirmed. If he nominates somebody who pulls out after a few months, that would be devastating to Obama and the Democrats. And while that might limit the number of nominees to 10% of what they would be in normal (or, perhaps, historic) times, Obama will find somebody. It will likely be somebody who isn't strongly politically polarized.
And the GOP will immediately insist that they won't confirm him or her. Little question about that. That's when it gets interesting.
Obama will likely use the fact that the GOP Senators are blocking a reasonable candidate to attack them, and likely attack the ones who are at most risk to lose their elections this year. If Obama can make these senators look more like jerks -- and I think he probably can -- then things may change.
I think that the most politcally reasonable thing for the GOP to do would be to vote on the nominee, and just vote him or her down. Obama can probably nominate three or four people during the next eight months, the GOP taking a few months to evaluate each one would be typical and easily defensible.
I don't like it, but that's what I think will happen.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I still have enough faith in the Americans to not elect a christian terrorist like Cruz. They rather go for a party clown like Trump as had happened before with Reagan, the worst president so far (double digit unemployment, almost started a nuclear war, reagonomics for which we pay the bills to this day, moronic supreme court nominations....).
Justice John Rutledge (September 26, 1789 – March 4, 1791) was succeeded by Justice Thomas Johnson (August 5, 1792 – January 16, 1793). That's a 17-month gap. IIRC there are other, longer gaps.
Perhaps you didn't understand what I said or requested. What constitutional basics is incorrect or flawed in it?
A law from 1907 does not address the US constitution and because the law had no enforcement mechanism, I'm pretty sure no one ever had any standing to challenge it on its constitutional grounds.
How can you claim dishonestly? Did the notes not exist or say something different? IF anyone is being dishonest is it the premise that you claim the court is discussing corporate person hood when the fact of the matter is only if the 14th amendment applies to corporations as well. But that is essentially the same thing and a matter of semantics, it isn't a point of contention. BTW, the actual ruling in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific specifically states "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Or are you trying to say that it doesn't say that?
Your reporting on this seems misleading too. The law in question was just passed by congress the year before it was challenged. Fortunately in this law, there was an enforcement mechanism which gave standing to sue.
The only thing I know of discussing corporations at the constitutional convention was a comparison of states and municipalities to corporations and a shot discussion of funding being so small that if wouldn't cover discharge of debt in corporate bankruptcies.
Corporations were a lot more powerful when the constitution was written. Many of the colonies which became countries under the articles of confederation and then states under the US constitution, were created and ran by corporations. Perhaps the framers of the Constitution just didn't see a reason to be redundant.
they're very friendly, helpful and charitable with people who they think of as equals but anyone else it's open season on. It took me a long time to piece this behavior together since it's so nonsensical. One minute they'd be giving you the shirt off their back the next they'd be laying into the poor with all their might.
The mark of a truly good man is that he cares for folks outside his class. Churchill seemed to be. Obama is definitely. Scalia was just another in a long line of borderline psychopaths who seem nice when they're around their own kind...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So then the 4th amendment doesn't apply to a telephone conversation because that doesn't fall under the category of "papers" or "effects"?
Give me a fucking break.
The argument is not that a corporation itself is a conscious being. An enormous number of people think that is the argument, but it's not. It's a huge straw man argument that's repeated ad nauseam, especially since Citizens United.
The *actual* argument is that corporations are *groups of people* (the shareholders) and that groups of people have the same rights as individuals. Doesn't that seem a lot more reasonable?
Your other argument is that they're not trying to ban speech, they're trying to ban the 'funding of speech'. It's the same thing. What you are saying is this: 'a group of people, in the form of shareholders, should not be allowed to pool their resources in order to get a message to the public.' Why do you want this? Because you don't want the public to be influenced by their message. You are trying to *abridge* their freedom of speech. Cutting the funding is just your *method* of preventing the speech. It's like saying "I'm not preventing your freedom of speech, I'm just duck-taping your mouth."
Is this the kind of stuff i can expect under /.'s new management? Because i won't stay around if that's the case.
The best memory I have of Scalia is that when Stephen Colbert gave his infamous White House Correspondents Dinner address, Scalia was laughing his ass off when he was lampooned. I might not agree with the man, but he had a great life lived on his own terms.
and is set so high that you can actually have lower grades and still pass the degree programme
Ahh the value of the modern education. The "attaboy" degree.
When I graduated as an engineer I did so with the knowledge that one of the kids in my class repeated several core subjects 3 times, didn't know basic engineering concepts much less those related to his discipline, and couldn't solve basic equations or even derive equations from problems. Makes me sad to see employment requirements that say "must hold a relevant degree" as the concept itself has no value.
University education was once the hallmark of the academic elite. Now it's just another 4 years of school to get a piece of paper that every company puts on their requirements whether they need it or not.
Don't be scared when they can't work together.
Be afraid of the times when they can. "Bi-partisan" usually means they found a way to screw you over in a way that makes both ends of The Party win and we lose.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dude, you are a joke living in backwards-land. Reagan was the best president in my lifetime. Clinton was the second-best.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...