Back by popular demand is Andrew Torrez! Last time we talked about Scalia and originalism, this time we’re going to do that again but also touch on some surrounding issues. Prepare to learn a ton about why Scalia was even more annoying that you thought!
Check out his blog here.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:11 — 53.3MB)
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It would of course be complete speculation, but how would Scalia have gone in the Hobby Lobby case if not for the excuse of RFRA. I may be misjudging him and he would have been consistent even if he didn’t like the outcome
I really enjoyed this episode and the previous one on this topic. It definitely makes me think that Scalia was really a terrible judge (which I thought before already, but I feel like I understand why a little better now). The whole originalism thing seems a bit nuts.
But then I got thinking about the other conservative judges on the bench. It’s not like Scalia could have this crazy idea and just push forward with it, he had to get 4 other people to agree to it for him to be able to win any cases with it. So what’s the deal with them? Are they just going along with it since they are also conservative and they like the outcome? Did he convince them that this is actually the right way to go about things? And if so, does that mean that even with Scalia’s death that we still have to worry about Originalism coming from his fellow judges?
I’ve heard many people talk about Scalia like he was this villain (which has always seemed pretty convincing to me), but what is the deal with those other 4 judges? I feel like I’m missing something here.
What an excellent question! I’ll put that to Andrew next time.
Sorry to be (2 years) late to the party, but I just got on the SIO/AS bandwagon. While listening to this I was 100% on board with Andrew’s analysis, but after reading his blog post I’m hesitant and I gotta push back. He made it seem like the guy in the Scalia case got caught with a baggie of cocaine, but then he describes it as “672 grams of cocaine for personal use” which is laughable. There’s just no way you can describe over a pound and a half of cocaine as “for personal use”. The guy is clearly involved in distribution. The thing is, even with that as the case, I almost totally agree with everything he argues! But that sort of thing makes me wonder if he’s cutting corners on other arguments that I don’t have enough knowledge to pick up on. I wouldn’t blame anyone for being ignorant of drug quantities, but now I don’t have enough information to know if he just didn’t know, or if he was shading the facts of the case to fit his argument.