Steve

Here are some excerpts from the talk and question/answer period given by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on March 14, 2005. It begins to address both the ambience of the modern federal courts as well as selection/opposition zeitgeist. The entire speech was transcripted by ThreeBadFingers.

Scalia:
"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."

(Q&A)Kent Hughes:

"Mr. Justice Scalia, what do you think has caused the emergence of the Living Constitution doctrine? What were the forces in society, were there pressures that were not responded to by the legislature? What caused the emergence of this new doctrine?"

Justice Scalia:

"I don’t know. Perhaps the question should be: how did we get away without having it develop much sooner. I mean it’s enormously seductive to a judge. The Living Constitution judge is a happy fellow. He comes home at night and his wife says, “Dear, did you have a good day on the bench?” “Oh, yes. We had a constitutional case today. And you know what? The Constitution meant exactly what I thought it ought to mean!” Well of course it does, because that’s your only criterion. That’s a very seductive philosophy. So it’s no surprise that it should take the society by storm. And it is the same thing for the man or woman in the street: to know that everything you care passionately about, whether it’s abortion or suicide, or whatever you care passionately about, it’s there in the Constitution. What a happy feeling. That’s what causes it. And that’s what makes it hard to call the society back from it. It’s tough medicine."

It is my contention that one of the intentions the Founders in constructing The Constitution and The Bill of Rights was to inhibit accumulation of power to anyone acting on behalf of the Federal Government. But as God has progressively been rejected in favor of cultural relativity and post-modernism, society naturally looks somewhere else to exercise almighty power, enforce justice, determine human righteousness, and provide salvation.