Antonin Scalia

Quote of the Day: IMHO, A Gay Polar Bear Would Make a Great Supreme Court Justice

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Jeffrey Toobin

There are four justices in their 70s now. Ruth Ginsburg is 79. She’s probably the most likely to leave if Obama is reelected because she’s sympathetic to him politically.

The next two oldest are Justice Scalia and Justice Kennedy who are 76, who probably don’t want to leave if Obama’s president, but they’re starting to get to the age where, you know, you don’t know exactly when your term is up, as they say.

– CNN’s senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court (affiliate link), discussing where the Supreme Court could be headed if President Obama is elected for another term. Toobin’s remarks were delivered during The Colbert Report.

(Does Toobin think that President Obama will appoint a gay polar bear to the Supreme Court if Justice Ginsburg retires? Let’s see….)

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Quote of the Day: The New Republic Isn’t That Glossy….

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Justice Scalia (left) and Judge Posner

I’m not going to get into this whole thing written for a glossy magazine.

– Justice Antonin Scalia, responding to a question about his thoughts on Judge Richard Posner’s somewhat critical review, in the New Republic, of the justice’s new book, Reading Law (affiliate link).

(We attended Scalia’s talk, which took place this afternoon and was sponsored by the New York City Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. Additional highlights from the eminently quotable justice’s remarks, after the jump.)

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The Benchslap Dispatches: Justice Scalia on Judge Posner’s ‘Hatchet Job’

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Justice Scalia (left) and Judge Posner

Over the past few months, Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge Richard Posner have been trading benchslaps. The most recent clash got going a few weeks ago, when Judge Posner wrote a harsh review for the New Republic of Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner’s new book, Reading Law (affiliate link).

Scalia surrogates rushed to the justice’s defense. One of his former clerks, Ed Whelan, wrote a series of posts for the National Review’s Bench Memos blog in which he criticized the Posner review. Justice Scalia’s co-author, Professor Garner, also responded forcefully to Judge Posner (who in turn responded to Garner, again in the New Republic).

But the justice himself remained silent on all of this. When we reached out to both judges about the apparent tiff, Judge Posner denied any personal animosity, but Justice Scalia declined to comment.

Now Justice Scalia has broken his silence. And His Honor seems none too happy with Judge Posner’s book reviewing skills….

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Non-Sequiturs: 09.07.12

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You know what would have been awesome? 1996-Bill Clinton versus 1980-Ronald Reagan in 2008. I’m not saying Slick Willy would have beaten the Great Communicator, but it’s always a bad idea to bet against Bill.

* David Lat has a new project that you might want to check out. They’re calling it “clerk lit”; it’s a serialized novel entitled Supreme Ambitions. [FindLaw]

* Concurring Opinions has the unsent emails from the Scalia-Posner flap. It’s the funniest thing since they explained how professors grade. [Concurring Opinions]

* Since a lot of smart kids are not taking the LSAT and applying to law school, maybe this is an opportunity for kids who are not so great at standardized testing to get into a better school than they would have under normal circumstances. Of course, that’s not what I would do. If a bunch of people suddenly start running in one direction, I’m the kind of brother who starts running with them and figures out later what all the fuss is about. [The Careerist]

* Ohio rescinds its early voting directive and asks Sixth Circuit for a stay. [Election Law Blog]

* Charlotte bankers survive the Democratic National Convention. Somehow. [Dealbreaker]

* The problem with owning a gun is that eventually, you are going to give yourself a reason to use it. [NY Daily News]

* Former tennis star ready to return serve at Columbia law school. Obviously, I’m using “star” a little bit broadly since I’m talking about a man who finds himself in the drunken class of 2015. [Dealbook]

* You have to think that Bill Clinton would have made the best trial lawyer ever. “Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. [bites lip.] Now imagine she’s white.” [What About Clients?]

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Morning Docket: 09.05.12

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* When in doubt, seek divine guidance and bet it all on black. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is going to be visiting Las Vegas this week, where he will attend a Red Mass and then head for the Strip. [Reno Gazette-Journal]

* After being limited on page length, a licensing expert opted to file a five-page cartoon brief in the Apple e-book case. This dude can retire, because he’s achieved legal baller status. [Bloomberg]

* James Hayes’s lawsuit over ICE’s alleged federal “frat house” has been sent to mediation for a possible settlement — but in real Greek life, he likely would’ve been peer pressured to de-pledge. [Washington Post]

* Bull’s-eye! Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Arthur Schack has recused himself from a personal injury case where he was alleged to have called a Cozen O’Connor partner a “piece of sh*t.” [New York Law Journal]

* The case of the missing asterisk: an Ohio Court of Appeals candidate was fined for wearing judge’s robes in her campaign flyers because she failed to indicate her judicial status or lack thereof. [National Law Journal]

* How much does it cost to cover up and then begrudgingly deal with a child sex abuse scandal? The tab thus far for Penn State University is about $17M — $4M of which went to legal services and defense. [CBS News]

* Despite Villanova Law’s admissions scandal, the dean reports that the school has admitted its “highest-quality” class ever. You know it’s hard to believe anything you say about your data, right? [Philadelphia Inquirer]

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Kris Herphries Edition

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Ed. note: This new column is about sports and the law. You can read the introductory installment here.

It wasn’t until law school that I realized adult life was one long series of birthday dinners. There was one every week it seemed. And at one birthday dinner in particular, I gave a speech that would haunt me for the rest of my law school career. Like an STD.

It was somebody’s birthday and we were eating Mexican food. And I was stationed at one end of the extra-long tables near a few friends and acquaintances. Several beers into the meal, I loudly steered the conversation towards a discussion of herpes. I’m not really sure why I did this. I think I had read something on the intertubes that day. At any rate, I told my end of the table that herpes was way more commonplace than they thought, and that the effect of the disease was far less dire than they thought. That, sure, some cases were worse than others, but that the puritanical myth-makers in our culture had convinced us that it was worse than death. Which it wasn’t. I was in high dudgeon, my friends. The floor was mine, and I was taking no prisoners in my attack on what I had deemed a cultural sex libel. “I’m telling you, ladies and germs. Herpes is NOT THAT BIG A DEAL!”

Not a single girl present at that dinner ever came close to having sex with me. On a related note, Kris Humphries was sued for allegedly giving a girl the herp.

Sports? Let’s talk it….

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Fun (and Depressing) Fact of the Day: Two-Thirds of Americans Are Pretty Freakin’ Dumb

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How many justices can you name?

Despite all the recent controversy surrounding U.S. Supreme Court decisions on health care, immigration and other issues, nearly two-thirds of Americans can’t name even a single member of the Supreme Court.

– a depressing conclusion drawn from a recent FindLaw telephone survey on the Supreme Court.

(What else can be learned from the absurd results of this survey?)

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Insane Clown… Plaintiffs? Juggalos Consider Suing the FBI

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Father of Our Country, Juggalo Washington

What is a juggalo?
Let me think for a second
Oh, he gets butt-naked
And then he walks through the streets
Winking at the freaks
With a two-liter stuck in his butt-cheeks

– Insane Clown Posse

At the 1992 Republican National Convention, Pat Buchanan announced that America was in the midst of a culture war. In his view, this war was being waged between descendents of the 60′s counter-culture and those who sought to protect “traditional” values. In the field of law, this idea found a home in (who else?) Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Romer v. Evans, in which he famously wrote that “[t]he Court has mistaken a Kulturkampf for a fit of spite.” Something about the original German sends a shiver down the spine, doesn’t it? Anyway, we can all surely agree that these two yahoos wouldn’t know a culture war if it slapped them in the face with a bottle of Faygo soda.

There’s a real culture war going on, ninjas. And it has nothing to do with gay marrying or abortions or the third rail of American politics, cockfighting. It has to do with the FBI’s insane decision to categorize Juggalos — i.e., fans of the Insane Clown Posse hip-hop duo — as a “loosely-organized hybrid gang.” It has to do with real persecution and honest-to-God discrimination against the Juggalo people.

Luckily for me and my fellow Juggalos, Insane Clown Posse doesn’t know the meaning of backing down. And that’s not a slam at all, it’s just a turn-of-phrase. They know the meaning. They just refuse to back down. Is what I’m saying….

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Quote of the Day: Finally, Something Sotomayor and Scalia Can Agree Upon

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Justice Scalia is fond of reminding me that he was the first Yankees fan on the Court and he is still a very loyal Yankees fan. I keep telling him the only difference is that I was born in the Bronx and he wasn’t.

– Justice Sonia Sotomayor, discussing her love of the New York Yankees, after she spent yesterday afternoon with the Bleacher Creatures at Yankee Stadium.

(After the jump, an unusual photo of Justice Sotomayor at the game….)

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Benchslap of the Day: Justice Scalia Pulls Rank on Judge Posner

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Scalia to Posner: You're not the boss of me!

Over the years, Judge Richard Posner (7th Cir.) has sent a number of his clerks to the chambers of Justice Antonin Scalia. Query whether Judge Posner’s record as a feeder judge to Justice Scalia will be impaired by the recent sniping between them (or by Judge Posner’s ideological drift; as he recently told NPR, he has grown less conservative “since the Republican Party started becoming goofy”).

Last month, Judge Posner expressed misgivings over Justice Scalia’s impassioned dissent in Arizona v. United States, a high-profile case about immigration. Judge Posner questioned the “famously outspoken” justice’s decision to include complaints about illegal immigrants in his dissent, suggesting that such discussion might be more appropriate for a campaign ad than a judicial opinion.

In a recent interview, Justice Scalia benchslapped back — hard. What did he have to say?

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