Scalia tried to make the court a conservative stronghold. He failed.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Scalia tried to make the court a conservative stronghold. He failed.

With Obamacare, the Justice's legislative vision has been dealt a death blow.

PostEverything
By Robert Schapiro June 26 at 6:00 AM
Robert Schapiro is Dean and professor of law at Emory University.

By upholding a key provision of the Affordable Care Act in King v. Burwell, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated that while the conservative revolution led by Justice Antonin Scalia may have had a strong impact on the court (and on the nation), it has not succeeded in winning over Justice Anthony Kennedy or Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Thus, while Scalia has won many battles, he has not won the war. And in Thursday’s King v Burwell decision he lost a major battle.

Scalia has fought tirelessly both to limit the court’s focus in interpreting statutes (in other words, to look only at the letter of the law and not at the broader purpose of the legislation) and to limit the power of the national government. ... King v. Burwell seemed tailor-made to vindicate both goals.

The basic question in the case was whether the phrase an “exchange established by the state” included health-care exchanges established by the federal government in states that refused to create their own. The plaintiffs argued that “established by the State” means that health insurance subsidies could not be offered in states that had chosen to use the federal health insurance market instead of their own. This is, indeed, a very strict interpretation.

For Scalia, the answer was easy: “established by the state” could not possibly mean “established by the state or the federal government.” Had Scalia’s textualism prevailed, the decision would have gutted the ACA. Six million people in the 34 states where the federal government runs the insurance marketplace could have lost subsidies, and premiums could have skyrocketed. ... But that didn’t happen. Instead, Roberts wrote an otherwise unremarkable opinion that invoked traditional principles of statutory interpretation and examined the meaning of the phrase “established by the state” in context.

[Orsino]

1. Scalia is a tool of those who succeeded in making the Court a conservative stronghold. n/t

[Fred Sanders]

2. Kennedy and Roberts are intelligent men who do not like to be trolled by Scalia and his two buds.

I bet Scalia has Fox tuned in 24/7 while the others do not even watch.

[KansDem]

3. Scalia, Thomas, and Alito appear at conservative fund-raisers

A few months ago, ThinkProgress launched a series of investigations into relationship of the right flank of the Supreme Court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia — with corporate donors and Republican operatives. In October, we revealed, through a document obtained from Koch Industries, that Scalia and Thomas had attended secret right-wing fundraisers organized by Charles Koch to coordinate political strategy. ThinkProgress has now discovered more events attended by conservative Supreme Court justices.

The Manhattan Institute, funded by major corporations like CIGNA, Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, is a conservative think tank in New York that produces right-wing policy papers as well as sponsoring speeches for judges and Republican politicians. In 2008, Justice Thomas headlined the Manhattan Institute’s Wriston Lecture; last October, Justice Alito was the headline speaker for the same event. According to the Manhattan Institute’s website, an individual must contribute between $5,000 to $25,000 to attend the Wriston Lecture. “To be invited to the Wriston Lecture,” Debbie Ezzard, a development official at the Manhattan Institute told ThinkProgress, “you have to give $5,000.”

Think Progress

Their interpretation of the Consitution is poisoned by right-wing politics. All three are tools for the plutocrats.

They don't belong on the SCOTUS.

[malaise]

4. He should really put his head in a bag

(as he wrote in his footnote) - I recommend a plastic bag.