Sun Apr 28 23:01:51 EDT 2013

Dworkin on Scalia

I've written about the unreasonableness of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia before, so it's nice to see constitutional lawyer Noah Feldman add weight to my argument while commemorating the death of renowned legal scholar Ronald Dworkin:

Dworkin's Death Deprives Scalia of His Moral Foil

In response to Scalia, Dworkin had a devastating riposte. How, he asked, did Scalia know that the judge's job was simply to apply the law? The Constitution never expressly says so, and in fact never specifies how it should be interpreted. The answer, Dworkin explained, was that Scalia had to rely on his own theory of the best moral vision for the country. In Scalia's political morality, judges should exercise restraint. But that belief itself was a product of interpretation and moral judgment -- and logically couldn't be otherwise. Scalia's "love affair with textual fidelity," as Dworkin put it, was therefore proof that he was interpreting the Constitution in the light of his moral judgment.

Posted by mjm | Permanent link | Comments
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