“Piece of cake,” Justice Scalia said, his voice dripping with disdain. “Piece of cake. Following the ‘values.’ ” He spat out that last word as though he had just taken a spoonful of anthrax.
But Justice Scalia did not give a direct answer to how he would have voted in Brown.
“As for Brown v. Board of Education, I think I would have” — and then he changed directions. He said he would have voted with the dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the case Brown overruled.
He would have voted to follow the founder's intent, which was to maintain a racist society.
From 19th-Century View, Desegregation Is a Test
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON
If there is a topic Justice Antonin Scalia does not relish discussing, it is how he would have voted in Brown v. Board of Education had he been on the Supreme Court when it was decided in 1954.
The question came up last month at the University of Arizona in what was billed as a conversation between Justice Scalia and Justice Stephen G. Breyer. The discussion, between the court’s two primary intellectual antagonists, bore the relationship to a conversation that a fistfight does to a handshake. The justices know how to get under each other’s skin, and they punctuated their debate with exasperation, eye-rolling and venomous sarcasm.
The Brown decision, which said the 14th Amendment prohibited segregation in public schools, is hard to square with Justice Scalia’s commitment to originalism, the theory of constitutional interpretation that says judges must apply the original understanding of the constitutional text.
Brown presents originalists with a problem. The weight of the historical evidence is that the people who drafted, proposed and ratified the 14th Amendment from 1866 to 1868 did not believe themselves to be doing away with segregated schools.
Yet Brown is widely thought to be a moral triumph. A theory of constitutional interpretation that cannot account for Brown is suspect if not discredited.
Originalists hate the subject. Justice Scalia has called it “waving the bloody shirt of Brown.”
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Thanks, this needs a
Thanks, this needs a cross-post over at my place and a double Oooh!
What a dipwad. What a...
Scalia and his ideological
Scalia and his ideological running partner, Br. Clarence Thomas, know, without ever having the balls to admit, that the logical extension of their argument or position regarding Brown v. is a defense of state supported racial segregation. These alleged Constitutional originalists simply can't get out of the way of the African American Express no matter how fast they try to run down the track or jump back and forth over the rails. The Brown decision was the major blow against America's system of racial apartheid and America's right-wing has never recovered or made peace with the Court's ruling fifty-five years later.
To me, "Waiving the bloody
To me, "Waiving the bloody shirt of Brown" is proof of active racism on Scalia's part.
The bloody shirt metaphor...
...just confirms in this case what we knew. You wouldn't (rather, Scalia wouldn't) say that without knowing what it means. I am amazed, though, that he speaks as plainly as he does in public settings. He obviously feels pretty immune with the lifetime appointment-- interesting though that he doesn't totally cross the "thin Brown line" and just say he would have dissented. Sounds like he was practically gagging as he talked his way around that.
I forgot to add: And what is
I forgot to add:
And what is worse, in their heart of hearts, is that a colored boy and his family live full time in the White House fifty-five years after Brown.
nobody in their right mind believes SCALIA
would have voted FOR Brown, and neither would his Stooge, Unca Clarence.
pt, I'm reminded of what dear Yogo wrote in 2007
about Michelle Obama.
Michelle Obama
Yeah, the hula-hoop photo shoot probably drove them right around the bend.
And yet nothing is more 1950s All-American...
...than hula hoops.
Oh, heck, let's just share that public-domain, taxpayer-paid-for photo one more time: