I’ve said on a number of occasions that Antonin Scalia has given up even trying to appear not to be a partisan hack.
Well, I think that I was wrong. Antonin Scalia has gone nuts.
His dissent on today’s Arizona immigration law decision, is a clear evidence of this. A prominent constitutional scholar Adam Winkler, called it jumping the shark, but I simply think he’s gone around the bend.
I cannot excerpt it and do justice, you can read the full opinion and dissent here, he suggests that federal immigration legislation would have sundered the union (this is strict constructionist?), declares it somehow illegitimate for the executive to prioritize enforcement, and that it’s just the same as bubble gum.
Seriously, I think that Scalia has been waiting for nearly 30 years to be the chief justice, and when he realized it was never going to happen, he had two choices:
- Leave the court, and make millions on the paid right wing talker/book circuit.
- F%$# you.
He has clearly chosen door number two, and I am expecting his spleen to leap from his body and throttle a litigant soon.
As to the actual decision, the Supreme Court struck down 3 of the 4 sections of the law, with the “papers please” section being given a pass for now, though the opinion makes it clear that this is not a final thing, and that there can be additional challenges to this section of the law, either on a constitutional level, or on the specific implementation.