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Court's new tilt could put Scalia on a roll

Long a dissenter, he's poised to be leader of a conservative majority.

The Nation

February 20, 2007|David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

* Dissenting when the court upheld an affirmative-action policy at a state-supported law school (Grutter vs. Bollinger, 2003): \o7" ... The University of Michigan Law School's mystical 'critical mass' justification for its discrimination by race challenges even the most gullible mind. The admissions statistics show it to be a sham to cover a scheme of racially proportionate admissions."

\f7* Dissenting when the court struck down a Texas law that made private sex between same-sex adults a crime (Lawrence vs. Texas, 2003): \o7"Today's opinion is the product of a court ... that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct....


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"The court has taken sides in the culture war.... "

\f7* Dissenting when the court struck down a state law that made "partial-birth abortions" a crime (Stenberg vs. Carhart, 2000): \o7"Today's decision, that the Constitution of the United States prevents the prohibition of a horrible mode of abortion, will be greeted by a firestorm of criticism -- as well it should.\f7"

* On "originalism" and relying on text and history of the Constitution, in a talk at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, 2005: \o7"On occasion I'm asked ... 'Justice Scalia, when did you first become an originalist?,' as though it is some kind of weird affliction that seizes some people: 'When did you first start eating human flesh?' "

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\f7* Asked at Switzerland's University of Freiburg in 2006 about the U.S. policy of holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay: \o7"I had a son on that battlefield, and they were shooting at my son, and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean, it's crazy."

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* Explaining in a letter to the Boston Herald in 2006 his gesture of flicking his fingers under his chin to a reporter who tried to question him when he was leaving Sunday Mass: \o7"From watching too many episodes of 'The Sopranos,' your staff seems to have acquired the belief that any Sicilian gesture is obscene -- especially when made by an 'Italian jurist.' (I am, by the way, an American jurist.)"

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