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Justice Scalia Dies

8den said:
Unlikely. No judicial exp.
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It's not unprecedented - there have apparently been quite a few Supreme Court justices with no prior judicial experience, though the last president to appoint one was Nixon. Obama would probably make a pretty good judge - it's a role he seems more suited for than president.

There's probably no chance whatsoever of the next Democratic president appointing him to the court, but the Republican reaction would be hilarious, even more so if he just resigned now and let Joe Biden appoint him.
 
Actually I think Obama would be much more interesting in a role like Jimmy Carter as an activist. He's still too young and dynamic to get suited up for a Supreme Court coffin
 
One part of me loves the political soap opera of jostiling, second-guessing and back-stabbing, the other part of me really can't be bothered to understand it all.
 
Already seeing the first conspiracies about him being murdered emerging. Obama dunnit, apparently.
 
Rand Paul has declared that Obama shouldn't appoint Scalia's replacement because he has a 'conflict of interest.' Jesus fucking wept. They'll make up so much fucking shit.

In other news, I'm seeing Loretta Lynch tipped as a likely nominee. First, she's already gone through the arduous Attorney General vetting system that the repubs refused to do for months and months and months. Second, she has a history as a career prosecutor, apparently meaning they're unlikely to be able to easily cast her as being excessively liberal.
 
Interesting account here from a student of Scalia

country, housed in one building and relatively intimate as graduate schools go. While I was there, Scalia was outed as a blatant racist to the extent that the Black American Law Students Association (BALSA) chapter at the law school brought it to the attention of acting Dean Norval Morris in several meetings. Scalia flunked every black student who took his classes that year. Nobody flunks courses in elite law schools. It's unheard of. He flunked one brother so badly, it skewered his grade average, and he became the first, last, and only student in the history of the school to repeat first year. That man went on to become a repected military judge. Ultimately, no action was taken because the source of the information was private, confidential and privileged, and Scalia's racist attitude and actions toward black students could be plausibly denied, but just barely. He stuck with his story that he had graded blindly, but it came out that Scalia had done the same thing, when he was on the faculty at the U of Virginia. However, Scalia was an academic star actively politicking for a federal judgeship with national political connections, as well as being quite personable. The school administration passed on taking any action, since the actual facts regarding his intent could not be adduced in a tribunal. However, what he thought of black people was indisputable, and believe me it was nothing nice. Being a swarthy, son of poor Sicilian immmigrants, and intent on becoming an all-American white man, he was consumed with putting as much space between himself and Negroes as possible, and becoming an honorary member of the WASP elite.
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Do you have a source for that quote? A link?

I'm ready to believe a lot of uncomplimentary things about Scalia, but an anonymous screed like that would benefit from a little bit of supporting evidence.
 
He made terrible remarks in December on a related note:

Justice Scalia under fire for race comments during affirmative action argument

"There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school, where they do well," Scalia said. He cited a brief that, he said, "pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don't come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools" where they do not feel they're being pushed in classes "that are too fast for them."
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On the one hand, I don't find that story impossible to believe. Scalia, as elbows' quote nicely demonstrates, had some rather backwards ideas about race and equality. It wouldn't shock me too much if such ideas had surfaced in his teaching, and it also wouldn't be too surprising that a prestigious law school like Chicago would back him up, given his value to the school's reputation.

On the other hand, though, an unsupported anecdote by some guy on Facebook has to remain firmly in the category of "unsubstantiated," in my opinion. I'm happy to engage in character assassination if the ammo is genuine, but I'd need more than this before I was willing to accept that Scalia was racially prejudiced in his teaching and grading.
 
mhendo said:
On the one hand, I don't find that story impossible to believe. Scalia, as elbows' quote nicely demonstrates, had some rather backwards ideas about race and equality. It wouldn't shock me too much if such ideas had surfaced in his teaching, and it also wouldn't be too surprising that a prestigious law school like Chicago would back him up, given his value to the school's reputation.

On the other hand, though, an unsupported anecdote by some guy on Facebook has to remain firmly in the category of "unsubstantiated," in my opinion. I'm happy to engage in character assassination if the ammo is genuine, but I'd need more than this before I was willing to accept that Scalia was racially prejudiced in his teaching and grading.
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What elbows posted is evidence that he was racially prejudiced in his teaching, to such an extreme extent that he did not want to teach black students.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
What elbows posted is evidence that he was racially prejudiced in his teaching, to such an extreme extent that he did not want to teach black students.
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The quote provided by elbows tells us something about Scalia and his attitudes to race, and to affirmative action in the US education system. It most definitely does not tell us that he was racially prejudiced in his own teaching, and nor does it tell us that he did not want to teach black students.

I feel dirty defending the guy. He was an asshole, his views on race and affirmative action were neanderthal, and I'm glad he's no longer on the bench. I think it is also reasonable to infer that, if he held the same views about race and affirmative action when he was teaching at the University of Chicago Law School (about 35 years before the quote provided by elbows), then these views might have colored his teaching. But we have no evidence of that, except one claim by a single Facebook user.

I'm not saying it didn't happen, and I'm not saying that the quote provide by J Ed is inaccurate or made-up; I'm simply saying that we need to treat evidence carefully, and we need to be careful not to draw firm conclusions from unsupported or incomplete evidence. That's all. I'm happy to revise my position if and when more evidence comes to light about his teaching practices at Chicago.
 
mhendo said:
The quote provided by elbows tells us something about Scalia and his attitudes to race, and to affirmative action in the US education system. It most definitely does not tell us that he was racially prejudiced in his own teaching, and nor does it tell us that he did not want to teach black students.

I feel dirty defending the guy. He was an asshole, his views on race and affirmative action were neanderthal, and I'm glad he's no longer on the bench. I think it is also reasonable to infer that, if he held the same views about race and affirmative action when he was teaching at the University of Chicago Law School (about 35 years before the quote provided by elbows), then these views might have colored his teaching. But we have no evidence of that, except one claim by a single Facebook user.

I'm not saying it didn't happen, and I'm not saying that the quote provide by J Ed is inaccurate or made-up; I'm simply saying that we need to treat evidence carefully, and we need to be careful not to draw firm conclusions from unsupported or incomplete evidence. That's all. I'm happy to revise my position if and when more evidence comes to light about his teaching practices at Chicago.
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I think you should revisit elbows' link. He does far more than that. He states his opinion where X or y student will succeed based on their race, with black students not suited to the top schools.
 
Vintage Paw said:
Mitch McConnell et al are suggesting that to honour Scalia's memory his replacement should be nominated by the next president, not Obama.

Gordon Bennet.
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Serve him right if that President were Clinton or Sanders and they nominated Obama.
 
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