Disrespectful Dissent

Since the good Justice Souter decided to pack it in, people once again care about what I'd like to think is America's most awesome -- if not its best -- branch of government. Sure, the judicial branch housed the likes of John Yoo and Janet Reno, but given what seems to be the now-required stupidity of the legislature and the executives, the brain power of the justice department is to intellectuals what carbon dioxide emissions are to a tiny tree, even if that power is limited to nine people. I haven't a clue who Obama is to pick for the empty seat, but since people are looking in that direction, I can point them to what makes this aspect of government so kick ass. Antonin "Nino" Scalia is kind of insane, which wouldn't mean shit to the lay people if he wasn't conveying has insanity in ways they can understand and even be amused by. The only advice I ever give to writers in how to write well (read: clearly, sensibly) is to read the writing of those who write as a means to an end, like showing all the reasons that one's colleagues are full of shit, which Justice Scalia does often.

Dissenting in Atkins V. Virgina:

Today's decision is the pinnacle of our Eighth Amendment death-is-different jurisprudence. Not only does it, like all of that jurisprudence, find no support in the text or history of the Eighth Amendment; it does not even have support in current social attitudes regarding the conditions that render an otherwise just death penalty inappropriate. Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members.

Concurring in Cruzan v. Missouri Dept. of Health:

[T]he point at which life becomes 'worthless,' and the point at which the means necessary to preserve it become 'extraordinary' or 'inappropriate,' are neither set forth in the Constitution nor known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory...[therefore] even when it is demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that a patient no longer wishes certain measures to be taken to preserve her life, it is up to the citizens of Missouri to decide, through their elected representatives, whether that wish will be honored.

In addition, some other examples of his saltiness ...

Concurring in Barnes v. Glen Theater, Inc.:

Perhaps the dissenters believe that 'offense to others' ought to be the only reason for restricting nudity in public places generally. . . . The purpose of Indiana's nudity law would be violated, I think, if 60,000 fully consenting adults crowded into the Hoosierdome to display their genitals to one another, even if there were not an offended innocent in the crowd.

Dissenting in PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin:

If one assumes, however, that the PGA TOUR has some legal obligation to play classic, Platonic golf—and if one assumes the correctness of all the other wrong turns the Court has made to get to this point—then we Justices must confront what is indeed an awesome responsibility. It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government's power "[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States," U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, to decide What Is Golf. I am sure that the Framers of the Constitution, aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, fully expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this august Court would some day have to wrestle with that age-old jurisprudential question, for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a "fundamental" aspect of golf.