by Jeremy Leaming
For what feels like decades, reporters, pundits, and ideologues, mostly on the right, but some on the left, have lauded Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for his wit, pointed oral argument questioning and allegedly brilliant writing. But those plaudits, in light of the justice’s performances during oral argument in cases challenging health care reform and Arizona’s racial profiling law, are wobbly at best, bordering on delusional.
In reality Scalia incr
easingly has difficulty, as The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank recently noted, containing his rabid partisanship. It’s unbecoming. During the Affordable Care Act oral argument it appeared, at times, that his only preparation involved reading right-wing blogs railing about the slippery slope to regulations mandating purchases of broccoli and gym memberships. At oral argument in Arizona v. U.S., regarding challenges to several portions of the state’s anti-immigrant law, Scalia “left no doubt from the start that he was a champion of the Arizona crackdown and that he would verbally lacerate anybody who felt otherwise,” Mibank wrote.
Milbank continued, “Scalia’s tart tongue has been a fixture on the bench for years, but as the justices venture this year into highly political areas such as health-care reform and immigration, the divisive and pugilistic style of the senior associate justice is very much defining the public image of the Roberts Court.”
And it’s not a flattering image. Not only does Scalia come off as a ringleader of right-wing hacks in robes, he increasingly comes off as clueless or heartless. During the health care oral argument, questions from Scalia and some of the other right-wing justices prompted a string of commentators to question whether the justices understood the health care insurance market.