The Discerning Texan

It has begun: Friday afternoon tectonic plates shifted in Washington D.C. and the tsunami is surely to follow. Most people thought that the first Supreme Court Justice that President Bush would get the opportunity to replace would be Renquist. That could still happen, but today when Sandra Day O'Connor announced that she would be stepping down, both the Left and the Right went straight to Defcon 1. Now it gets serious.

Aside from my personal satisfaction that Justice O'Connor will not be trampling on the Constitution anymore, there is still a lot of concern in these quarters that Bush will choose someone like Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, in an attempt to placate the foaming-at-the-mouth Democrats -- who most decidedly do not want a Justice that will interpret an "inconvenient" piece of parchment like the US Constitution...

Glenn Reynolds today pointed the Blogosphere towards a number of learned viewpoints as to where this could go next (via Reason Magazine). Or...perhaps Gullyborg had the most pragmatic suggestion of all.

I know I am being repetitive here -- even Mark Steyn does that at times --but I keep going back over and over again to a seminal speech several months back by Justice Scalia, in which he discussed the appropriate Constitutional role of the court -- almost as if it were Alexander Hamilton himself speaking -- and why the appropriate judicial philosophy is so critical. So I am going back to that particular well again today, because Scalia's arguments are about as concise and irrefutable as one can find on the subject of the makeup of the Supreme Court.

So...before you start listening day in and day out to all of the "sky is falling" moaning and wailing from every nook and cranny of the American Left, read Scalia's words, and consider them very carefully. Because you will find within them the very key to the whole shebang: the choice between continuing this greatest experiment in the history of mankind or submitting to the tyranny of the unelected elites who will ruin America as we know it.

(And yes, all the bold emphases are my own -- but I put them there because I can almost hear the passion in his words, though I was not even present...and if I have gotten any of the intended meaning wrong through my own emphases, I hope the esteemed Justice will forgive me; but I'd bet he would understand my own passion...) Justice Scalia:

Thank you very much Mr. Hamilton. It’s a pizzazzy topic: Constitutional Interpretation. It is however an important one. I was vividly reminded how important it was last week when The Court came out with a controversial decision in the Roper Case. And I watched one television commentary on the case in which the host had one person defending the opinion on the ground that people should not be subjected to capital punishment for crimes they commit when they are younger than eighteen. And the other person attacked the opinion on the ground that a jury should be able to decide that a person, despite the fact he was under eighteen, given the crime, given the person involved, should be subjected to capital punishment. And it struck me how irrelevant it was, how much the point had been missed.

The question wasn’t whether the call was right or wrong. The important question was who should make the call. And that is essentially what I am addressing today.

I am one of a small number of judges, small number of anybody: judges, professors, lawyers; who are known as originalists. Our manner of interpreting the Constitution is to begin with the text, and to give that text the meaning that it bore when it was adopted by the people. I’m not a strict constructionist, despite the introduction. I don’t like the term “strict construction”. I do not think the Constitution, or any text should be interpreted either strictly or sloppily; it should be interpreted reasonably. Many of my interpretations do not deserve the description “strict”. I do believe however, that you give the text the meaning it had when it was adopted.

This is such a minority position in modern academia and in modern legal circles that on occasion I’m asked when I’ve given a talk like this, question from the back of the room: “Justice Scalia, when did you first become an originalist?” As though it is some kind of weird affliction that seizes some people. “When did you first start eating human flesh?”

Although it is a minority view now, the reality is that not very long ago, originalism was orthodoxy. Everybody, at least purported to be an originalists. If you go back and read the commentaries on the Constitution by Joseph Story, he didn’t think the Constitution evolved or changed. He said it means and will always mean what it meant when it was adopted.

Or consider the opinions of John Marshall in the Federal Bank Case, where he says, we must not, we must always remember it is a constitution we are expounding. And since it’s a constitution, he says, you have to give its provisions expansive meaning so that they will accommodate events that you do not know of which will happen in the future. Well, if it is a constitution that changes, you wouldn’t have to give it an expansive meaning. You can give it whatever meaning you want and when future necessity arises, you simply change the meaning. But anyway, that is no longer the orthodoxy.

Oh, one other example about how not just the judges and scholars believed in originalism, but even the American people. Consider the Nineteenth Amendment, which is the amendment that gave women the vote. It was adopted by the American people in 1920. Why did we adopt a constitutional amendment for that purpose? The Equal Protection Clause existed in 1920; it was adopted right after the Civil War. And you know that if that issue of the franchise for women came up today, we would not have to have a constitutional amendment. Someone would come to the Supreme Court and say, “Your Honors, in a democracy, what could be a greater denial of equal protection than denial of the franchise?” And the Court would say, “Yes! Even though it never meant it before, the Equal Protection Clause means that women have to have the vote.”

But that’s not how the American people thought in 1920. In 1920, they looked at the Equal Protection Clause and said, “What does it mean?” Well, it clearly doesn’t mean that you can’t discriminate in the franchise. Not only on the basis of sex, but on the basis of property ownership, on the basis of literacy. None of that is unconstitutional. And therefore, since it wasn’t unconstitutional, and we wanted it to be, we did things the good-old-fashioned way and adopted an amendment.

Now, in asserting that originalism used to be orthodoxy, I do not mean to imply that judges did not distort the Constitution now and then, of course they did. We had willful judges then, and we will have willful judges until the end of time. But the difference is that prior to the last fifty years or so, prior to the advent of the “Living Constitution”, judges did their distortions the good-old-fashioned way, the honest way -- they lied about it. They said the Constitution means such and such, when it never meant such and such.

It’s a big difference that you now no longer have to lie about it, because we are in the era of the "evolving Constitution." And the judge can simply say, “Oh yes, the Constitution didn’t used to mean that, but it does now.” We are in the age in which not only judges, not only lawyers, but even school children have come to learn the Constitution changes. I have grammar school students come into the court now and then, and they recite very proudly what they have been taught: “The Constitution is a living document.” You know, it morphs.

Well, let me first tell you how we got to the “Living Constitution.” You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand it. The road is not that complicated.

Initially, the Court began giving terms in the text of the Constitution a meaning they didn’t have when they were adopted. For example, the First Amendment, which forbids Congress to abridge the freedom of speech. What does the freedom of speech mean? Well, it clearly did not mean that Congress, or government could not impose any restrictions upon speech. Libel laws for example, were clearly Constitutional. Nobody thought the First Amendment was carte-blanche to libel someone. But in the famous case of New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court said, “But the First Amendment does prevent you from suing for libel if you are a public figure and if the libel was not malicious.” That is, the person, a member of the press or otherwise, thought that what the person said was true. Well, that had never been the law. I mean, it might be a good law. And some States could amend their libel law...

Could we stop the cameras? I thought I announced a couple of shots at the beginning was fine, but click, click, click. Thank you.

It’s one thing for States to amend it’s libel law and say, “We think that public figures shouldn’t be able to sue.” That’s fine. But the courts have said that the First Amendment, which never meant this before, now means that if you are a public figure, that you can’t sue for libel unless it’s intentional, malicious. So that’s one way to do it.

Another example is: the Constitution guarantees the right to be represented by counsel; that never meant the State had to pay for your counsel. But you can reinterpret it to mean that.

That was step one.

Step two, I mean, that will only get you so far. There is no text in the Constitution that you could reinterpret to create a right to abortion, for example. So you need something else. The something else is called the doctrine of “Substantive Due Process”. Only lawyers can walk around talking about substantive process, in as much as it’s a contradiction in terms. If you referred to substantive process or procedural substance at a cocktail party, people would look at you funny. But, lawyers talk this way all the time.

What substantive due process is, is quite simple, the Constitution has a Due Process Clause, which says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Now, what does this guarantee? Does it guarantee life, liberty or property? No indeed! All three can be taken away. You can be fined, you can be incarcerated, you can even be executed, but not without due process of law. It’s a procedural guarantee.

But the Court said -- and this goes way back, in the 1920s at least, in fact the first case to do it was Dred Scott. But it became more popular in the 1920s -- The Court said: there are some liberties that are so important, that no process will suffice to take them away. Hence, substantive due process.

Now, what liberties are they? The Court will tell you. Be patient.

When the doctrine of substantive due process was initially announced, it was limited in this way: the Court said it embraces only those liberties that are fundamental to a democratic society and rooted in the traditions of the American people.

Then we come to step three; Step three: that limitation is eliminated. Within the last twenty years, we have found to be covered by Due Process the right to abortion, which was so little rooted in the traditions of the American people that it was criminal for two hundred years; the right to homosexual sodomy, which was so little rooted in the traditions of the American people that it was criminal for two hundred years.

So it is literally true, and I don’t think this is an exaggeration, that the Court has essentially liberated itself from the text of the Constitution, from the text, and even from the traditions of the American people. It is up to the Court to say what is covered by substantive due process.

What are the arguments usually made in favor of the Living Constitution? As the name of it suggests, it is a very attractive philosophy, and it’s hard to talk people out of it: the notion that the Constitution grows. The major argument is the Constitution is a living organism, it has to grow with the society that it governs or it will become brittle and snap.

This is the equivalent of, an anthropomorphism equivalent to what you hear from your stock broker, when he tells you that the stock market is resting for an assault on the eleven-hundred level. The stock market panting at some base camp. The stock market is not a mountain climber and the Constitution is not a living organism for Pete’s sake, it’s a legal document, and like all legal documents, it says some things, and it doesn’t say other things.

And if you think that the aficionados of the Living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. My Constitution is a VERY flexible Constitution. You think the death penalty is a good idea: persuade your fellow citizens and adopt it. You think it’s a bad idea: persuade them the other way and eliminate it. You want a right to abortion: create it the way MOST rights are created in a democratic society. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea, and enact it. You want the opposite, persuade them the other way. THAT'S flexibility. But to read EITHER result INTO the Constitution is NOT to produce flexibility, it is to produce what a constitution is NOT designed to produce: rigidity.

Abortion, for example, is offstage, it is off the democratic stage, it is no use debating it, it is unconstitutional. I mean prohibiting it is unconstitutional. I mean it’s no use debating it anymore. Now and forever, coast to coast, I guess until we amend the constitution, which is a difficult thing.

So, for whatever reason you might like the Living Constitution, don’t like it because it provides flexibility. That’s not the name of the game.

Some people also seem to like it because they think it’s a good liberal thing. That somehow this is a conservative/liberal battle. And conservatives like the old-fashioned originalist Constitution and liberals ought to like the Living Constitution. That’s not true either. The dividing line between those who believe in the Living Constitution and those who don’t is NOT the dividing line between conservatives and liberals.

Conservatives are willing to grow the Constitution to cover their favorite causes just as liberals are. And the best example of that is two cases we announced some years ago on the same day, the same morning. One case was Romer v. Colorado, in which the people of Colorado had enacted an amendment to the State Constitution by plebiscite, which said that neither the State, nor any subdivision of the State would add to the protected status’s against which private individuals cannot discriminate. The usual ones are: race, religion, age, sex, disability and so forth. Would not add sexual preference. Somebody thought that was a terrible idea, and since it was a terrible idea, it must be unconstitutional. Brought a lawsuit, it came to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, “Yes, it is unconstitutional.” On the basis of… I don’t know. The Sexual Preference Clause of the Bill of Rights, presumably. And the liberals loved it; and the conservatives gnashed their teeth.

The very next case we announced is a case called BMW v. Bush. Not the Bush you think; this is another Bush. Mr. Bush had bought a BMW, which is a car supposedly, advertised at least as having a superb finish, baked seven times in ovens deep in the Alps, by dwarfs. And his BMW apparently had gotten scratched on the way over. They did not send it back to the Alps, they took a can of spray-paint and fixed it. And he found out about this and was furious, and he brought a lawsuit. He got his compensatory damages, a couple of hundred dollars, the difference between a car with a better paint job and a worse paint job. Plus, two million dollars against BMW for punitive damages for being a bad actor, which is absurd of course, so it must be unconstitutional. BMW appealed to my court, and my court said, “Yes, it’s unconstitutional.” In violation of, I assume, the Excessive Damages Clause of the Bill of Rights.

And if excessive punitive damages are unconstitutional, why aren’t excessive compensatory damages unconstitutional? So you have a federal question when ever you get a judgment in a civil case. Well, that one the conservatives liked, because conservatives don’t like punitive damages, and the liberals gnashed their teeth.

I dissented in both cases. Because, I say, “A pox on both their houses.” It has nothing to do with what your POLICY PREFERENCES are; it has to do with what YOU think the CONSTITUTION is.

Some people are in favor of the "Living Constitution," because they think it always leads to greater freedom. There’s just nothing to lose. The evolving Constitution will always provide greater and greater freedom, more and more rights. WHY would you think THAT? It’s a two way street. And indeed, under the aegis of the Living Constitution, some freedoms have been taken away.

Recently, last term, we reversed a fifteen year-old decision of the Court, which had held that the Confrontation Clause, which couldn’t be clearer, it says, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to be confronted with the witness against him. But, a Living Constitution Court held that all that was necessary to comply with the Confrontation Clause was that the hearsay evidence which is introduced -- hearsay evidence means you can’t cross examine the person who said it because he’s not in the court -- the hearsay evidence has to bear indicium of reliability.

I’m happy to say that we reversed that last term, with the votes of the two originalists on the court. And the opinion said that the only indicium of reliability that the Confrontation Clause acknowledges is confrontation. You bring the witness in to testify and to be cross examined. That’s just one example, there are others, of eliminating liberties.

I think another example is the right to jury trial. In a series of cases, the Court had seemingly acknowledged that you didn’t have to have trial by jury of the facts that increase your sentence. You can make the increased sentence a sentencing factor. You get thirty years for burglary, but if the burglary is committed with a gun, as a sentencing factor, the judge can give you another ten years, and the judge will decide whether you used a gun. And he will decide it, and not beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether it’s more likely than not... Well, we held recently, I’m happy to say, that this violates the right to a trial by jury.

The Living Constitution would not have produced that result; The Living Constitution, like the legislatures that enacted these laws would have allowed sentencing factors to be determined by the judge. Because all the Living Constitution assures you is that what will happen is what the MAJORITY want to happen. And that’s NOT the purpose of Constitutional guarantees.

Well, I’ve talked about some of the false virtues of the "Living Constitution," let me tell you what I consider its principal vices are. Surely the greatest, you should always begin with principal, its greatest vice is its ILLEGITIMACY. The only reason federal courts sit in judgment of the constitutionality of federal legislation is NOT because they are explicitly authorized to do so in the Constitution -- some modern constitutions give the constitutional court explicit authority to review German legislation or French legislation for its constitutionality -- OUR Constitution doesn’t say anything like that.

But John Marshall says in Marbury v. Madison: look, this is lawyers work. What you have here is an apparent conflict between the Constitution and the statute. And all the time, lawyers and judges have to reconcile these conflicts; they try to read the two to comport with each other. If they can’t, it’s judges work to decide which ones prevail. When there are two statutes, the more recent one prevails. It implicitly repeals the older one. But when the Constitution is at issue, the Constitution prevails because it is a superstatute. I mean, that’s what Marshall says, its judges work.

IF you believe however, that the Constitution is NOT a legal text, like the texts involved when judges reconcile or decide which of two statutes prevail, if you think the Constitution is some "exhortation" to give effect to the most fundamental values of the society as those values CHANGE from year to year; If you think that it is meant to reflect -- as some of the Supreme Court cases say, particularly those involving the Eighth Amendment -- if you think it is simply meant to reflect the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society, if THAT is what you think it is, then WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD YOU HAVE IT INTERPRETED BY NINE LAWYERS? What do I know about the evolving standards of decency of American society? I’m afraid to ask.

If that is what you think the Constitution is, then Marbury v. Madison is wrong. It shouldn’t be up to the judges, it should be up to the legislature. We should have a system like the English. Whatever the legislature thinks is constitutional is constitutional. They know the evolving standards of American society, I don’t. So in principle, it’s incompatible with the legal regime that America has established.

Secondly, and this is the killer argument, I mean, it’s the best debaters argument. They say in politics, you can’t beat somebody with nobody, it’s the same thing with principles of legal interpretation. If you don’t believe in originalism, then you need some other principle of interpretation. Being a non-originalist is not enough. You see, I have my rules that confine me. I know what I’m looking for. When I find it, the original meaning of the Constitution, I am handcuffed. If I believe that the First Amendment meant when it was adopted that you are entitled to burn the American flag, I have to come out that way, even though I don’t LIKE to come out that way. When I find that the original meaning of the jury trial guarantee is that any additional time you spend in prison which depends upon a fact, MUST depend upon a fact found by a jury, once I find THAT'S what the jury trial guarantee means, I am handcuffed. Though I’m a law and order type, I can not do all the mean conservative things I would like to do to this society. You got me.

Now, if you’re not going to control your judges that way, what other criterion are you going to place before them? What is the criterion that governs the living constitutional judge? What can you possibly use, besides original meaning? Think about that. Natural law? We all agree on that, don’t we... The philosophy of John Rawls? That’s easy... You see, there really is nothing else. You either tell your judges, “Look, this is a LAW, like all laws, give it the meaning it had when it was adopted.” Or, you tell your judges, “GOVERN us. YOU tell us whether people under eighteen, who committed their crimes when they were under eighteen, should be executed. YOU tell us whether there ought to be an unlimited right to abortion or a partial right to abortion. YOU make these decisions FOR us.”

I have put this question, you know I speak at law schools with some frequency just to make trouble, and I put this question to the faculty all the time, or incite the students to ask their living constitutional professors. “OK professor, you are not an originalist, what is your criterion?” There is none other.

And finally, this is what I will conclude with, although it is not on a happy note, the WORST thing about the Living Constitution is that it will DESTROY the Constitution. You heard in the introduction that I was confirmed, close to nineteen years ago now, by a vote of ninety-eight to nothing. The two missing were Barry Goldwater and Jake Garn, so make it a hundred. I was known at that time to be, in my political and social views, fairly conservative. But still, I was known to be a good lawyer, an honest man, somebody who could read a text and give it its fair meaning, had judicial impartiality and so forth. And so I was unanimously confirmed.

Today, barely twenty years later, it is difficult to get someone confirmed to the Court of APPEALS. What has happened?? The American people have figured out what is going on.

If we are selecting LAWYERS, if we are selecting people to read a text and give it the fair meaning it had when it was adopted, yes, the most important thing to do is to get a good lawyer. If on the other hand, we’re picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience, a NEW constitution, with all sorts of NEW values to govern our society, then we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look principally for people who agree with us, the majority, as to whether there ought to be this right, that right, and the other right. We want to pick people that would write the new constitution that we would want.

And that is why you hear in the discourse on this subject, people talking about "moderate," we want "moderate" judges. What is a "moderate" interpretation of the text? Half way between what it REALLY means and what you’d LIKE it to mean? There is no such thing as a moderate interpretation of the text. Would you ask a lawyer, “Draw me a MODERATE contract?” The only way the word has any meaning is if you are looking for someone to WRITE a law, to WRITE a constitution, rather than to INTERPRET one. The moderate judge is the one who will devise the NEW constitution that most people would approve of.

So for example, we had a suicide case some terms ago, and the Court refused to hold that there is a constitutional right to assisted suicide. We said, “We’re not yet ready to say that. Stay tuned, in a few years, the time may come, but we’re not yet ready.”

And that was a moderate decision, because I think most people would not want a… If we had gone, looked into that and created a national right to assisted suicide, that would have been an immoderate and extremist decision.

I think the very terminology suggests where we have arrived: at the point of selecting people to WRITE a constitution, rather than people to give us the fair MEANING of one that has been Democratically adopted. And when THAT happens, when the Senate interrogates nominees to the Supreme Court, or to the lower courts, you know, “Judge so and so, do you think there is a RIGHT to this in the Constitution? You don’t?! Well MY constituents’ think there ought to be, and I’m not going to appoint to the court someone who is not going to find that.” When we are in THAT mode, you realize, we have rendered the Constitution USELESS, because the Constitution will mean what the majority wants it to mean. The senators are representing the majority. And they will be selecting justices who will devise a constitution that the majority wants.

And that of course, deprives the Constitution of its principal utility. The Bill of Rights is devised to protect you and me against, who do you think? The MAJORITY. My most important function on the Supreme Court is to tell the majority to take a walk. And the notion that the justices ought to be selected because of the positions that they will take that are favored by the majority is a recipe for destruction of what we have had for two-hundred years.

To come back to the beginning, this is new. Fifty years old or so, the Living Constitution stuff. We have not yet seen what the end of the road is. I think we are beginning to see. And what it is should really be troublesome to Americans who care about a Constitution that can provide protections against majoritarian rule. Thank you.

Do not forget these words as you try to rise above the cacaphony of the hysterical Left in the coming days and weeks. The fact is, many of them don't even get it -- what they really are doing to our country to our system of law -- all in the name of "utility". And for the ones who do get it -- who do understand the damage this does to the very basis of our United States -- and yet who choose to be judicial activists anyway: there is a special place in hell for them as far as I am concerned. Because to me that truly does create a strict definition of "anti-American".

Anyway, brace yourselves. This is going to make Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill look like a walk in the park. This is going to be ugly: in fact it had better be ugly -- because if it is all nice and civil, that will mean that the President I voted for caved -- gave in to the baying media and into the Ted Kennedy's and Chuck Schumers -- and in that case we might as well mail in the dream of our founders. Because these next couple of appointments mean simply everything.

So it is time to get to work, those who have read and understood what Scalia is saying here. Reread it again: burn it into your memory, because we are going to need to understand it well enough to explain it to our fellow citizens, one at a time. Until enough people get it that this goes down the way it should. Otherwise we all lose.

I know people who, because of Roe v. Wade, and ONLY because of Roe v. Wade, would oppose this course of action. I feel for them, and while I can appreciate the emotions and fears driving their limited viewpoint about this one issue, the truth is that most of them do not see the forest for the trees -- all because of the emotion and hysteria of this one nation-killing issue: For if they get their way, they will have the right to termintate their pregnancies, but they won't have a United States of America anymore. They will have terminated what this country is founded on -- this time the "fetus" will be the very document that makes us what we are -- a free democratic society, rather than slaves to the tyranny of 9 judges who answer to no one. From where I sit, anyone who would abort that fetus must be stopped.

So....we must work. We must work hard, in every way we can to salvage this thing. I'll start:

Dear Mr. President:

Please, please nominate originalists to the court. It may be the most important thing you do in your entire Presidency. Don't cave in to these back-stabbers: if you have to go "nuclear", so be it. But this is too important. I know you know what the right thing is to do. And I have faith that you will do that right thing. Please don't let us down now.

You took an oath to "...preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." If you really meant that, please stand up for what is right, rather than what is expedient. For this is the very reason you were destined to be President at this moment in history. God Bless.

To be continued...