Antonin Scalia, Conservative Legal Giant

by Russ Douthat

Feb. 13, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/opinion/antonin-scalia-conservative-legal-giant.html?comments#permid=17568128

My heart goes out to Justice Scalia's family, as they mourn the death of their husband and father. 

That said, I can only hope that the disastrous effects his decisions have had on the US can now begin to be reversed. 

His decision on Citizens United officially changed the US from a democracy with one person, one vote to one in which the amount of money one has determines the degree of influence one has on elections and public policy, essentially back to a country where, for all practical purposes, only propertied persons have a vote.

His decisions on the 2nd Amendment have accelerated the decline of the US on its path of random and not so random gun violence, causing more than 30,000 deaths a year. In that decision, after stating that his guiding principal is that the Constitution was written to be understood by the average voter, Justice Scalia launches into the most convoluted arguments, defying fifth grade reading and comprehension skills, to argue that the "prefatory clause" has no influence on the intent and meaning of the entire Amendment, that it was, in essence, only a meaningless appendage.

Later in his opinion Justice Scalia engages in an equally convoluted set of arguments to show that "Arms" in the Amendment refers only to hand guns and possible long guns for personal protection, not all the weaponry needed by a State Militia to protect itself from Federal encroachment. Even Justice Scalia did not want tanks and machine guns in the hands of individuals.