Have I Mentioned That I Went To Yale
Justice Scalia may be gone, but his role of making the half-remembered ramblings of third-tier winger shock jocks play a central role in constitutional interpretation lives on:
In today’s 5-4 SCOTUS ruling that a private company administering a public access channel in NYC is not a state actor subject to the First Amendment, Justice Kavanaugh writes for the majority: “It is sometimes said that the bigger the government, the smaller the individual.” 1/— Dorf on Law (@dorfonlaw) June 17, 2019
It appears to be an aphorism coined by a libertarian talk show host named Dennis Prager (who originally referred to “citizen” rather than “individual”). Various libertarian candidates for office have used the phrase, with or w/o attribution. 3/— Dorf on Law (@dorfonlaw) June 17, 2019
The claim conflates government’s size and its reach. Govt could be large in terms of taxes or spending/GDP ratio but small in its intrusion on people’s lives. Welfare states need not be and generally have not been totalitarian states. 5/— Dorf on Law (@dorfonlaw) June 17, 2019
But merits aside, note how five GOP-appointed Justices issue an opinion containing a slogan that seems to travel almost exclusively in the libertarian right-wing-o-verse. [End of thread]— Dorf on Law (@dorfonlaw) June 17, 2019
Hey, when every justice comes from the same two law schools at least you’re guaranteed the highest levels of intellectual excellence…