Justice Scalia gave his best interview yet the other day with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN’s series, Q&A.
One of the most interesting segments was when Lamb showed Justice Scalia this clip from the Daily Show castigating his 60 Minutes appearance and his vote in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), and then asked for his reaction.
“I watched [the Daily Show] once and that was enough.”
Justice Scalia elaborated further. First, he reminded John Stewart that President Bush was subsequently re-elected in 2004, so blaming his current occupancy of the office, the ongoing war in Iraq, or anything else derivatively-related in 2008 is specious. Second, he recounted how press studies conducted subsequent to the election found that Vice President Gore would have still lost even if he had never brought the election challenge that eventually resulted in Bush v. Gore, and the votes had been counted the way Gore sought. Third, and “penultimately,” Justice Scalia reiterated that the case only came before SCOTUS because Gore brought the suit, so it was he–not Bush or SCOTUS–who “wanted courts to decide the election.”
What was SCOTUS supposed to do when one of the parties (Bush) alleged the Florida Supreme Court had violated the federal constitution, “turn the case down for not being important enough … hardly.” Last, he also reiterated a point I have made as well that the vote finding the Florida Supreme Court violated the constitution was 7-2, not 5-4.
Justice Scalia also hinted at some future books he’d like to write, most exciting of which would be a sequel to his seminal tome, “A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law.”
The discussion ranged from what items are in his official SCOTUS portrait (a copy of–what else–The Federalist, and Webster’s Second International Dictionary (he doesn’t care for the Third edition)) to whether he still smokes a pipe (which he said was a very useful tool during his confirmation hearings to distract attention from what he was saying).
Thx to Convictions, WestBlog, and WSJ Law Blog
