Scalia et al Make Up Corporate Constitutional Rights

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:



Scalia et al Make Up Corporate Constitutional Rights

by Jonathan Tasini
Thursday 13 of January, 2011



It is has been pointed out by others that when the Republicans chose to organize the reading of the Constitution on the House floor, they conveniently left out parts they didn't like. But, they have intellectual--and I use "intellectual" loosely--support for this from Justice Scalia and his wing of convenient Constitutionalists who choose to find things in the document they so revere like rights of Corporations.

The point I am making is not a new one. But, it rises today thanks to a fabulous blog post by Linda Greenhouse whose regular legal commentary and coverage for The New York Times of the Supreme Court was a pearl and is missed now that she has moved on. But, she is a blogger there and she writes today on "Problems of Democracy". Let me build up to the critical part, from my vantage point, with her first example of the convenient way in which Scalia views the Constitution:

My own beef is not that the members of Congress chose not to acknowledge inconvenient parts of the document as written, but that their show of reverence for the written text obscured much of what really matters in our constitutional culture...

There is nothing inherently liberal, progressive or even ideological one way or another about acknowledging that the Constitution we have today is the multilayered product of original understanding mediated over time by perceived need. Nor is Justice Scalia himself, his protestations aside, immune from this reality. One of his opinions from the Supreme Court’s last term is my favorite recent example of how even this most original of all originalists sometimes bends toward the practical in his constitutional interpretation.(emphasis added)

Greenhouse then proceeds to describe a case, Maryland v. Shatzer, which involved the interrogation and then the re-interrogation of a prisoner. Scalia and the majority decided that 14 days was enough of a time period between a prisoner's invocation of his right not to answer questions and the next time the police could come at him again"

Fourteen days? Where did that come from as a constitutional principle? Fourteen days, Justice Scalia explained, provide "plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel, and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody." That sounds an awful lot like constitutional policy, not constitutional interpretation.

The point Greenhouse makes is simple: strict interpretation is conveniently in the eye of the beholder and, in particular, in the eye of Scalia. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=15078

[unblock]

1. they just do whatever they want and find some excuse to justify it

and they don't let facts or logic get in the way.

their philosophy is if you stand up and defend your actions and claim to have a justification and a basis in law or the constitution or morality or god or whatever, and refuse to back down when questioned, well, that's all you need.

they understand, sadly quite correctly, that most people won't bother thinking about what they say. they only pay attention to how confidently they say it and whether or not they give up or claim victory.