Sam Alito and Sarah Palin’s First Amendment
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Alito’s instinct that allowing his speech to be scrutinized was not in his interest was certainly not wrong:
Justice Alito defends the #SB8 ruling coming at 11:58 p.m. EDT because the law was set to go into effect at midnight. Except it went into effect at midnight the night *before.*— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) September 30, 2021
For those of you not neck-deep in SCOTUS discourse, Justice Alito is currently giving a speech defending the “shadow docket.”
Alito’s defense consists entirely of defeating strawmen, deceptively conflating standards for different issues, and telling outright lies. https://t.co/9UtemR3zbN— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) September 30, 2021
“A ruling on the emergency application is not a precedent on the issue,” Justice Alito says, after joining an opinion that FAULTED THE LOWER COURTS FOR FAILING TO TREAT THEIR EMERGENCY ORDERS AS PRECEDENTIAL.— Leah Litman (@LeahLitman) September 30, 2021
Just as striking as all of the lying and dissembling is the thinly aggrieved tone in which the speech was delivered. As Paul observed in comments:
These people are so pompous and thin-skinned. A guy like Alito wouldn’t survive for thirty seconds in a debate between equals, which is why being a federal judge is the ideal job for him, assuming Pope or Emperor isn’t currently available.
What Alito’s speech reminded me above all else is the guy who desperately tried to get fired before resigning (just like his idol/patron Bari Wiess) and then complained bitterly that his resignation wasn’t considered national news. Free speech and academic freedom give you the right to say things, but don’t give you the right to have what you say treated with respect. When you blah-blah-blah about “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” free speech means I’m allowed to say that these arguments weren’t interesting the first 10,000 times I heard them either. And while the ill-gotten majority of the Supreme Court has the authority to nullify popular precedents with massive reliance interests with unreasoned opinions as a matter of raw power, it doesn’t (yet) have the right to stop reporters from telling the truth about what they’re doing. A man in Alito’s position apparently can’t afford to accept that.