If you don’t know what this is about, I’ll let Jon Stewart explain it:
The thing that amazes me is that Scalia is claiming that because Congress is too scared to vote against the Voting Rights Act, that it falls to the Supreme Court to change this legislation. Not because it is unconstitutional or anything.
This seems to be the epitome of legislating from the bench. So why aren’t all the originalist conservatives screaming about this? What’s next? Striking down the Declaration of Independence because everyone is able to pursue happiness?
UPDATE: Stephen Colbert gives the opposing view:
“Yes, I used to beat my girlfriend, but I haven’t since the restraining order so we don’t need it anymore”
3 Comments
Believe it or not, I think Scalia is right. I think congress people would lose votes simply because of the name. These are the same americans that thought finding Higgs Boson was proof in God, because it was nicknamed the God Particle
Scalia may be right or he may not. That’s not the point. It is not the job of the Supreme Court to decide if laws are stupid or not.
Scalia’s own words about the VRA are pretty telling. “This is not a job to leave to the Congress…” The text of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments explicitly leaves their enforcement to Congressional discretion. “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” I thought his whole judicial philosophy was supposed to be about adherence to the text of the Constitution. That clause pretty clearly says “defer to Congress.”