quote:Simply because someone's opinion is informed by his experiences does not mean that he has irrevocably decided how he will vote in future litigation.
Good thing I never said it did.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Then exactly what is "impartiality"? My understanding of it is that if you are partial, you have predetermined what the outcomes of litigation are prior to arguments on the merits by the litigants or that you will steer the proceedings so as to prejudice the case for one side.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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posted
My objection is to your use of "irrevocably."
And yes, one can be partial on some issues and impartial on others. And I don't believe one can say, as Justice Scalia did, here are my deeply held opinions on the death penalty. By the way, they have no bearing on how I look at the law.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Ah, now I see what you were saying. Though I believe someone can have strong moral beliefs about something and still look at the law about it disinterestedly. Just loook at former AG, now Judge, Bill Pryor. Despises abortion, and yet still advised every Alabama municipality in the wake of Sternberg that they had to allow partial birth abortion and they he would take them to court to force them to allow it if they crossed him.
Lee: I'm not surprised. As I was reading I immediately thought of Vince Foster.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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"Jay, I won't get too deep into it because I'm not a credientialed jurisprude, but your statement implies to me that you hold a derivative assumption of the legal realist school of jurisprudence: that all judicial processes are politics by other means. Because Justice Scalia is a policy-setter by means of his role, the public has a right to know everything that he says, not matter whether he actually is saying something as a private citizen."
The problem is, he wasn't speaking as a private citizen. The only reason he was giving that talk in the first place was because he's a Supreme Court justice. They didn't say, "Hey, let's get this guy to give a speech, and whoa, he's on the Supreme Court?! Who knew?!".
I wouldn't advocate following him around and trying to tape everything he says as a private citizen. I see no reason for the public to know what he whispers in his wife's ear when they have strictly-missionary-style sex (there, try to get that image out of your brain). But it's a different matter when he's giving a speech directly because of his Supreme Court justicehood.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Tim: that doesn't address someone I said after that post. While I disagree with where the line is droawn on what should be the public's right to access a justice's private conduct, Justice Scalia has still made speeches like that available. He just doesn't allow them to be videotaped. The public was not denied anything from that high school speech as far as I know.
I disagree with all of you that a person is unable to separate himself and his thoughts from the context of his role as a government actor. While I would not argue with the legal realists that at some point absolute separation is impossible, there are adequate examples of decent jurists on the left and on the right who have such virtue. They have been able to hold personal opinions that later bore on cases they heard and still managed to follow the law despite desires to steer the result another way. However, I doubt anyone here is going to agree with me.
But back to his prohibition on videotaping. Let me try to tease out what I think might an undercurrent to this conversation. If the real objection is not disclosure of his speech versus no disclosure, is the real issue that Justice Scalia is improperly limiting which media can come? (Note: by media here, I do not mean a broader definition like TV vs. print journalism. I mean a narrower meaning akin to videotape vs. audiotape.) Is the objection founded on a sense of entitlement for more complete exposure to judges?
If that is the case, I think perhaps what might be one reason Scalia does not want videotape is that he understands the kind of emotion that television inspires. As an appellate judge, he is trying to maintain the same detachment as he has when he is sitting on the bench. Allow me to give an extended quote from Judge Richard A. Posner in Frontiers of Legal Theory, pp. 228-29:
quote:[E]motion focuses attention, crystallizes evaluation, and prompts action in circumstances in which reflection would be interminable, unfocused, and indecisive. But in situation in which making an intelligent decision requires careful, sequential analysis or reflection, emotion may, by supplanting that process, generate an inferior decision. � We expect appellate judges to be less emotional [than] trial judges because [we want them] remote from the emotionally most salient features of the case. � The design of the appellate process can thus be seen as a response to the danger of emotionalism viewed as the placing of too much weight on a salient feature of a complex situation.
Since he understands the roles of an appellate judge and appellate court are to prevent too much emotionalism attaching to subject matters of litigation, he is attempting to short circuit potentially inflammatory interpretations of his performance in front of a video camera, both on and off bench. The majority of the Supreme Court agrees with him on the negative consequences of videotaping on the ability of the court and its personnel to perform their duty with the candor and collegiality that television destroys. A rather colorful example was Justice David Souter�s congressional testimony where he said, �I can tell you the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body.�
However, in the interest of the public�s desire to know his thoughts on matters of potential litigation, he has still released his actual words and let them stand on their own. Therefore, nothing substantive has been hidden from the people.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by David Sands: However, in the interest of the public�s desire to know his thoughts on matters of potential litigation, he has still released his actual words and let them stand on their own. Therefore, nothing substantive has been hidden from the people.
Bull: inflection is everything.
Take a raw transcript of one of Hitler's speaches from the 1930's and he might not come across as a raving lunatic either....
People have a right to know the character of public officials: it applies to the President, but Scalia thinks he's above such scrutiny.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
You can still hear inflection in audiotape, and he allows that.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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"The public was not denied anything from that high school speech as far as I know."
It's been a while since I read the original articles when it happened, but I believe they were denied everything, yes? Didn't the security (Secret Service?) goons destroy the reporter's audio recording?
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
For that speech, yes, the audio recordings that the reporters made would have been destroyed. However, having gone to a school where we had two justices from the Supreme Court speak in a single year, I know that the administration usually is allowed to make some recording to place in the library for posterity. There could still be a recording available. The reporters would just have to check it out.
That said, Scalia has, to my knowledge, subsequently allowed such recordings, so the policy has been in effect since.
(On a side note, the Secret Service does not provide the security detail for the justices. United States Marshals do.)
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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"(On a side note, the Secret Service does not provide the security detail for the justices. United States Marshals do.)"
Alright. I knew they weren't just regular cops or security guards, but I couldn't remember exactly where they'd come from.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I had thought the Secret Service had been responsible too, until Rehnquist came to our school. Lots of guys in dark suits and sunglasses with lapel pins that looked like the Texas Rangers' badge. Then it hit me.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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posted
Hello, everyone. Just peaking back because I finally found something I had promised to post for everyone two weeks ago.
Veers said, "I am Catholic and I object to being put in the same religious group as Bush. I personally know no Catholics who are for Bush. I mean, even the Pope called the Iraq War a disaster for humanity."
BJ replied that many Catholics he knew had voted for Bush.
I added that there is a turn toward orthodoxy among Catholics in the United States. While this study does tell what growth there has been over the past 15 years among traditionalist Catholics (as opposed to modernist), it does lay out the precise percentages that I had in mind.
There are a few things I wish he had done differently (e.g., divide Jews into Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and Orthodox into Hasidum on one side and Joe Lieberman-liberal ones on the other), but it's more complete than anything you'll find in the media.
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