‘Rock star’ justice speaks to USU
The Constitution should be seen as a static document, not something to be changed with the moral whims of the nation, said Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a speech given Monday.
Scalia addressed USU as part of the Freedom and Rule of Law Conference held Monday and Tuesday. The conference was held to support a political science project being done pertaining to liberty and American Constitutionalism.
In his introduction of Scalia, Federal Court Judge Michael McConnell said, “He’s the closest thing to a rock star in the judicial business. He’s objective and the greatest stylist and writer in the Supreme Court.”
Scalia first spoke about the current independent regulatory agencies and their role in society. He said the government creates these agencies to deal with important issues that arise. The agencies answer to Congress; it is impossible to take politics out of decisions that are made, he said.
He said belief in the expert has been replaced by belief in the judge. A change has occurred which has eventually turned the Constitution into a “living instrument” in order to respond to an evolving standard of decency, Scalia said. In the past the Constitution was thought to be static, but current judges are thought to be pioneer law makers, he said. This is dangerous, he said, because with this “activist jurisdiction” comes the danger of defining morals as law.
“Judges have no greater capacity than the rest of us to decide what is moral,” he said.
If judges allow their own opinions on moral issues to sway their ruling or follow the public opinion instead of sticking to the framework of the Constitution, the purpose of the Constitution as an objective standard of law is lost.
“Once you fashion a Supreme Court that agrees with the majority, you may as well say goodbye to the Bill of Rights,” he said.
In the past, the name of the game was to find good judges that could refashion the Constitution, but now, he said it’s as if a mini-Constitutional convention is being conducted every time a new court justice is selected.
There are many cases brought before the court that must all be handled differently but the most important thing is that the Constitution is applied to those cases, he said.
“I shudder at the political turmoil that awaits the U.S.” Scalia said. “We have become addicted to abstract moralizing.”
There is no remedy for politics in the judicial system, Scalia said. He said he would prefer that the people rewrite the Constitution rather than a judge, but said he thinks the ideal situation would be as in the past where qualified lawyers rewrote the Constitution.
The Constitution is a guide that was created for a dynamic commercial republic, Anthony Peacock, associate professor of political science, said. The founders anticipated problems but they structured it to be able to accommodate different situations in the future, he said.
This is the first year a political conference of this kind has been held and they hope to be able to do it again in the future, Peacock said. The total attendance of the conference was 1,700 people between the Ballroom, the Sunburst Lounge and the TSC Auditorium.
The focus of the conference was to discover what the meaning of liberty is, to expose students to some of the current issues and get them interested in politics, he said.
–monica.swapp@aggiemail.usu.edu