Should the Best Justices Publicly Praise the Worst?

On television, Justices Thomas and Scalia “lavishly” praise colleagues whom Curt Levey suggests are nightmarish. My latest article explains and documents why oral public accolades by the best justices for the worst are not only unwarranted but refuted by their own written opinions.

 

Repeatedly in writing, Justices Thomas and Scalia have questioned the integrity of their colleagues; and accused them of arrogance, lawlessness, license, illegitimate abuse of power, basing decisions on no more than their own personal values, contempt for the Constitution, sowing confusion rather than providing clarity, hypocritically pretending to defend the weak against the powerful while actually favoring the powerful at the expense of the weak, protecting inconsequential expression while disdaining the heart of the first amendment, poisonous and pernicious racism and sexism, belief in black inferiority, jeopardizing the lives of good innocent people in order to save the lives of the most vicious and depraved, placing the welfare of terrorists above the lives of soldiers combatting them, mandating infanticide (the barbaric killing of human children), and numerous other sins.

 

These are very strange criteria for “good … honest … fabulous” justices. 

 

If it is unrealistic to expect Thomas and Scalia to criticize sharply in public those with whom they must work, cordial interpersonal working relationships surely do not require going to the opposite extreme. Even if it would be inappropriate to be publicly negative about other justices, there is no reason to give lay people the impression that rabid leftist judicial ideologues are fantastic rather than destructive. Facing the grave threat of losing even the current sometime constitutionalist Supreme Court majority, this can only lend legitimacy to and encourage the judicial arrogance, dishonesty and abuse of power against which Scalia and Thomas repeatedly have protested in writing.

If total calamity is to be averted, conservatives must effectively educate the public about dangers posed by extremist liberal judicial activism. Robert Bork was defeated by vicious lies. Leftist fanatics should be defeated by the little-known media-buried truth. 

My article provides an easily understood review of the Scalia-Thomas catalog of shocking truths.

See SSRN or here (with links), and here (without links).