Justice Scalia Forgets Which Side Won In Own Majority Opinion
Antonin Scalia is a conservative Catholic, who barely hides his contempt for those who disagree with him. He is arrogant beyond description as he decries the liberal agenda and attacks common sense, compassionate laws designed to curb religious influence in government as well as helping the common man. Not surprisingly, Scalia is not perfect, not by a long shot as evidenced by his latest faux pas.
It seems the justice made a glaring error yesterday in his dissent on an EPA case, getting his own majority opinion from 13 years ago backward. (Scalia’s clerks generally write his first drafts, Totenberg explains, but even if Scalia himself wrote it, a clerk would have been expected to catch the gaffe.) In yesterday’s case, Scalia faulted the EPA for factoring costs into regulation, adding that the court had rejected a similar effort 13 years ago and should do so again. “The problem,” explains Sahil Kapur at Talking Points Memo, is that “the EPA’s position in the 2001 case was exactly the opposite.”
Dan Farber at Legal Planet elaborates:
- Scalia’s dissent “contains a hugely embarrassing mistake. He refers to the Court’s earlier decision in American Trucking as involving an effort by EPA to smuggle cost considerations into the statute. But that’s exactly backwards: it was industry that argued for cost considerations and EPA that resisted. This gaffe is doubly embarrassing because Scalia wrote the opinion in the case, so he should surely remember which side won!”
The Supreme Court officially changed the wording of Scalia’s dissent to reflect the correction, even changing the header from “Plus Ça Change: EPA’s Continuing Quest for Cost-Benefit Authority” to “Our Precedent.”
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Hunter Steele
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It’s not the religion it’s the people who ‘practice it’…The more religious they are the dafter their brains become.
One of the things I’ve learned in life is that it’s never a good idea to put in asshole in charge or on the Supreme Court. Yet for some reason an asshole always ends up in charge or on the Supreme Court.
Ain’t that the truth Joe.
Can he be removed from the bench for signs of delirium? His memory is clearly going: witness that he can’t remember the stand he took on an issue for which he wrote the major decision. If he’s losing his marbles, is there a reason that he needs to be maintained as a Supreme Court justice? Just asking…
What’s even more worrisome is the probability that he’s not suffering from dementia.
My field of fucks to give is barren right now with these people Hunter. I just cannot anymore with them right now.