If you’re curious about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, here’s a rare first-hand look in the form of an extended converation with Scalia and Bryan Garner, Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University Law School.
The pair have coauthored a new boon, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, written for both the lay reader and legal scholar.
Hosting the discussion is Stephen Adler of Reuters.
It’s an interesting look at Scalia’s “originalist” take on the Constitution, a document, as he points out, written where the only penalty for felonies was death.
Scalia, the court’s longest-serving justice an a Reagan appointee, touches on issues ranging from abortion to mandatory health care and a revealing look at some of the ideas driving.
If you believe, as we do, that Scalia’s a powerfully negative force in modern law, the discussion reveals how he is able to justify his role in key decisions which have done so much to reverse the civil libertarian gains of the Warren court of the 1950′s and 1960′s.
