Judge (soon to be Justice) Amy Coney Barrett: "His [Justice Scalia's] judicial philosophy is my philosophy."

Quick story, going to back to my law school days:

1) When I was in law school, one of my professors announced one day, "We won't have our normal class on Thursday; instead we'll meet here Saturday at 8:00 a.m. Don't ask me why because I won't tell, and don't tell your friends, but just be here."

2) We walk in Saturday morning, slightly dazed but intrigued, for this mystery weekend class. And there, in the front of the lecture hall, is Justice Antonin Scalia (this was 1997 or 98). My professor leaned liberal but had clerked for Justice Scalia a few years prior.

3) Scalia gives a riveting lecture. He's self-assured, engaging, wildly persuasive in explaining his "textualist / originalist" judicial approach (interpret laws exactly as they're written). I started skeptical but walked out thinking, "Geez, maybe he has really solved it."

4) But then as the semester proceeded, in that class and others, it started to become clear: Scalia was not so much a "textualist / originalist" as a "textualist / originalist but only when it suits me and, almost always, lands on the conservative partisan side of the ledger."

5) This article smartly sums up the inherent contradictions in Scalia's approach and the gap between his rhetoric and practice: https://prospect.org/justice/scalia-problem-originalism-textualism-trumpism/

6) I have no problem with a judge or justice defining herself or himself as conservative or liberal, generally speaking, though you'd hope they would take each case strictly on the merits.

7) But do *not* buy this notion that Justice Scalia had some magic principle of neutral, text-based judicial interpretation. He was as strongly ideological and partisan as it gets.

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