Getting to Know your Justices

Check out this video of a discussion with Justice Breyer and Justice Scalia. These two justices represent the two major opposing perspectives on constitutional interpretation. Who seems to make more sense? The discussion is particularly void of any specific factual scenarios, so you get constitutional interpretation without the baggage of an individual case. What is interesting is not only the places where they disagree but also the beliefs and perspectives they share. Also, thanks to my faithful reader J. for pointing out some legal humor in a recent Supreme Court Opinion, Lopes v. Gonzolaz, where Justice Souter quotes Alice in Wonderland:

Reading §924(c) the Government’s way, then, would often turn simple possession into trafficking, just what the English language tells us not to expect, and that result makes us very wary of the Government’s position. Cf. Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U. S. 1, 11 (2004) (“[W]e cannot forget that we ultimately are determining the meaning of the term ‘crime of violence’”). Which is not to deny that the Government might still be right; Humpty Dumpty used a word to mean “‘just what [he chose] it to mean— neither more nor less,’”5 and legislatures, too, are free to be unorthodox. Congress can define an aggravated felony of illicit trafficking in an unexpected way. But Congress would need to tell us so, and there are good reasons to think it was doing no such thing here.6

You can see here how Souter is employing his own method of interpretation to determine what the statute is talking about. I wonder if I can quote Alice in Wonderland in my finals? Probably not. Supreme Court Justices get a bit more leeway.