What Scalia Meant

And what he could have meant had Reagan nominated Bork first and Scalia second and therefore probably gotten them both:

…had Scalia’s dissents ultimately shaped America, women would not have reproductive rights, the federal government could not effectively regulate health care, LGBT people would not have the right engage in sexual intercourse without fear of arrest – let alone alone the right to marry – and states could single them out for legal disabilities. Women could be excluded from state educational institutions, public schools could teach creationism in science classes and prisoners could be assaulted by prison guards. And, in large part because of Scalia, in America today, the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, the rights of employees and consumers have been curtailed, Brown v Board is more likely to be used to stop integration than to promote it and moneyed interests increasingly dominate elections.

But, to be Scrupulously Fair, at least he wasn’t Sam Alito:

And it’s true that Scalia was not a strict Republican party-liner: there were some cases in which he was willing to make common cause with liberal justices out of principle. In one dissent, he (correctly) characterized the mandatory drug testing of Border Patrol officers as “a kind of immolation of privacy and human dignity in symbolic opposition to drug use”. He wrote a brilliant dissent, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, upholding the habeas corpus rights of American citizens accused of terrorist activities. And in some 4th and 6th Amendment cases, he regularly voted in a civil libertarian direction.

I’ll have more on the politics of replacing Scalia later.