Thursday, March 10, 2011

Scalia - in dissent, accomplishes little - Linda Greenhouse, NYTimes

"Antonin Scalia, approaching his 25th anniversary as a Supreme Court justice, has cast a long shadow but has accomplished surprisingly little." - Linda Greenhouse, Justice Scalia Objects


Times Supreme Court reporter emeritus (now housed at Yale) Linda Greenhouse considers the question asked a few days ago after Antonin Scalia in Michigan v. Bryant denounced the majority's opinion as "transparently false" and "utter nonsense".  Is Justice Scalia's vehement denunciation as of a recent majority opinion written by Justice Sotomayor evidence of a particular fury provoked by women who cross him....or just another example of his habitual hyperbole?   Greenhouse doesn't attempt to answer that question, but she does conclude that he has not been nearly so effective as his analytic and rhetorical powers might lead one to expect.


Update: Monroe Freedman today posted a comment on Legal Ethics Forum that demonstrates similar Scalian hyperbole:
Scalia recently criticized an Alito opinion as failing to “give a clue as to the rule of law it is applying,” and “mak[ing] no sense.” He further accused the opinion as “judicial incoherence” and “doctrinal obscurity” that “harms our image, if not our self-respect, because it makes no sense,” and said that the court should “abandon this Alfred Hitchock line of jurisprudence.” NASA v. Nelson.

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