Last Friday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke to an audience at the University of Richmond during a luncheon lecture, entitled "Do Words Matter?", and about 250 people mostly made up of faculty members and legal professionals were treated to what a strict constitutionalist sounds like.
Justice Scalia spoke on the Constitution not being a "living document", and railed against the 14th Amendment that opened the door for Roe v. Wade and Homosexual civil rights and liberties.
A short refresher on the "Equal Amendment Clause" to the 14th Amendment:
"Equal Protection Clause" of the 14th Amendment, upon which entirely hangs the hopes of the federal marriage equality movement, reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:
"Under the guise of interpreting the Constitution and under the banner of a living Constitution, judges, especially those on the Supreme Court, now wield an enormous amount of political power," continued Scalia, "because they don’t just apply the rules that have been written, they create new rules."
Scalia said the 14th Amendment "distorts" the "due process" and opened the door to legal abortion and other behaviors, and would be viewed as criminal.
"The due process clause has been distorted so it’s no longer a guarantee of process but a guarantee of liberty," Scalia expounded. "But some of the liberties the Supreme Court has found to be protected by that word - liberty - nobody thought constituted a liberty when the 14th Amendment was adopted. Homosexual sodomy? It was criminal in all the states. Abortion? It was criminal in all the states."
So, Scalia is against allowing "homosexuals" their right to "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" and he’s against Roe v. Wade which made abortion legal in the United States.
What Scalia is advocating for is the 10th Amendment which would allow each individual State to determine what rights should be afforded to homosexuals, and any other group of people, and that each State shall determine their own Laws on abortion. But he really just finds the 14th Amendment inconvenient for his ideology.
Scalia did say that ""The way to change the Constitution is through amendments approved by the people, not by judges altering the meaning of its words." and on this, I agree.
But he contradicts himself, the Amendment process as written in the Constitution does make it a "living document". There have been 27 Amendments to the constitution, so its not etched in stone.
But it’s a shame he doesn’t practice what he preaches such as when he and his right wing activist judges made their decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which basically declared that corporations are people.
These "people" flooded this past election with millions of dollars from special interest groups who can contribute as much money as they want to PAC’s and donate to campaigns. And no donor lists are required by the FEC for a PAC classified under 501(c)4.
Karl Rove used that against Americans across the country under the name Crossroads GPS where he raised $65 million, and most of the money came from who knows where (Karl knows). He ran ads supporting policy, right wing policy that favors corporations and right wing agendas.
I would like for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to show me where in the US Constitution our Founding Fathers wrote that Corporations are people too. Scalia spouts that he’s a strict constitutionalist, but he’s nothing more than an activist Judge, albeit a Supreme Judge, but the same kind of Judge he pretends to rail against.