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Who Will Speak For You? - Continued
Edward L. Daley
"But I'm thinking, Well, on this kind of an issue you're asking a human question, and the Americans are human - and so is everybody else," Breyer states, "and I don't know, it doesn't determine it, but it's an effort to reach out beyond myself to see how other people have done... So I'd have to say I'd rather have the uncertainties and I'd rather have the judge understanding that he's looking but it's not controlling. And I'd rather have him use it with care, hoping that the judges won't lack the control to do so. Then I would like to have an absolute rule that says legally never. And the fact that I cannot find such an absolute rule - legally never - even in King Arthur - gives me some cause for hope."
Hope? Hope of what?
Justice Scalia carried on the conversation by repeating the points he'd made before, discussing in greater detail certain cases in support of his argument, and stating that "One of the difficulties of using foreign law is that you don't understand what the surrounding jurisprudence is, so that you can say, you know, Russia follows Miranda, but you don't know that Russia doesn't have an exclusionary rule."
He said that it was unfair to compare American death penalty cases, and the issue of whether it is cruel and inhuman for someone to wait a dozen years before being executed, to similar foreign cases. His basic point was that foreign and American cases were not comparable because of the enormous differences in the way each system deals with the death penalty to begin with. The question of what might be considered cruel and unusual in one country would not apply to another for that reason, and, therefore, would be rendered irrelevant.
This argument seemed to be completely lost on Breyer, as was evidenced by the fact that he responded with the following statement: "Well, it's relevant in the sense that you have a person who's a judge, who has similar training, who's trying to, let's say, apply a similar document, something like cruel and unusual or - there are different words, but they come to roughly the same thing - who has a society that's somewhat structured like ours."
At that point Justice Scalia wisely decided to ask the moderator for a new question, and the professor's response was to say that, "Although you have suggested your view about this, I'm still unclear about what the harm or risk is of considering foreign sources that may bear on problems that are common to both countries. For example, you mentioned the - both of you have mentioned the death penalty. Why shouldn't U.S. constitutional decisions take account of shifting world standards on such things as the death penalty, on the execution of juveniles, on the execution of the mentally ill? Are we that far from the rest of the world in terms of the way life is lived?"
The first thing I thought after hearing this was WHAT AN IDIOT! However, even though I suspect that Scalia was thinking the same thing, he showed enough restraint to continue the conversation without becoming insulting to his host, and eventually related that in his dissenting opinion regarding a homosexual sodomy case, he'd pointed out that the court had cited only European law. "Of course," remarked Scalia, "they [the Europeans] said it not by some democratic ballot, but by decree of the European Court of Human Rights, who was, you know, using the same theory that we lawyers and judges and law students - we know what's moral and what isn't."
Breyer attempted to water down the argument, by infusing some mundane legal point into the mix, but the issue's course was quickly corrected by Scalia when he related that, "it [the matter of selectively citing foreign decisions] lends itself to manipulation. It lends itself - It invites manipulation." His subsequent remarks on that score were nothing short of eloquent, and were masterfully reproachful of Justice Breyer's opinion without actually being too insulting to the man personally.
Justice Breyer was quick to change the subject, saying, "Can I go into a different topic? Because I - it's slightly - it's still international application. But I'm curious what my colleague thinks of this because I actually do believe, which I've said several times, that this is really a very dramatic issue and so forth, but it isn't really the important issue to me."
Of course it wasn't the important issue to him at that point in the conversation. He'd just had his head handed to him, figuratively speaking, and was obviously perplexed as to how he could continue to address Scalia's line of reasoning without either agreeing with him, or looking like a jackass.
Be that as it may, he then went on to talk about a few cases which were, as he put it, "much less glamorous", rounding out his comments by asserting, "this world we live in is a world where I think it's out of date for people to teach about foreign law in a course called 'foreign law.' I think it's in date to teach in contract law or in tort law, because those are the cases we're getting."
I must admit that in certain cases relative to contract law, where companies deal with one another internationally, there are foreign law principles which may well permeate the meat of the matter. But the supposition that the more important and far-reaching moral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, pertaining to American societal norms and conventions, should necessarily be dependent upon the whims of foreign law decision-makers, merely because such is the case in the aforementioned respects, is ridiculous on its face. But then, that's just my opinion.
Later on, Mr. Dorsen queried, "The question I have in my own mind is whether this question is a naive question. And that is, rather than looking at foreign courts to say Greece decided our way, the United Kingdom decided our way, X country decided a different way, another country has a different view, rather than thinking about these courts and cases in terms of the results to think about them in terms of the persuasiveness of the opinions, just as a New York court might look at a Montana decision and be influenced not by the result of the Montana court or the Wyoming court or the Illinois court but by the cogency of the arguments, by the depth of the reasoning, by the logic."
To which Justice Scalia responded, "Well, you're begging the question. I mean, your question assumes that it is up to the judge to find THE correct answer. And I deny that. I think it is up to the judge to say what the Constitution provided, even if what it provided is not the best answer, even if you think it should be amended. If that's what it says, that's what it says."
Ask yourself why Antonin Scalia would say such a thing. If you understand the role of a judge in the American system of government, the answer should be obvious. It's not his job to write the law, only to interpret it. Writing law is the job of the legislative and executive branches. Even if he disagrees with the law he's considering, he has no lawful authority to change it, nor should it be his desire to do so. You see, Judge Scalia understands the fundamental principle behind the words "separation of powers", and he actually practices what he preaches.
Furthermore, he proves his allegiance to the Constitution, and to the American people when he contends, "And on these Constitutional questions, you're not going to come up with a right or wrong answer; most of them involve moral sentiments. You can have arguments on one side and on the other, but what you have to ask yourself is what does American society think?" Although the discussion continued for nearly another half hour, nothing was said by anyone present which was more profound than that, so I won't bother reiterating further.
Suffice it to say that if I were a Supreme Court Justice, I'd ask myself the following questions:
Do judges in the U.S., at any level of jurisprudence, consider the Constitution to be satisfactory or not?
If not, what other nation has exhibited the capacity to improve upon it, or even to approach its standards of excellence in such a way as to be worthy of my consideration of its views?
Should justices of the highest court in the land be allowed to speak for the attitudes of the American people, while simultaneously ignoring them, respectful only of the opinions of elitists from other countries, and/or the American legal intelligencia?
In short, do we really want these people making moral judgments for the rest of us?
I may not be a law professor, an attorney, a judge, or even a formal student of the practice, but it seems to me that the law should be based, at least in part, on common sense and practicality. It should also be reflective of the will of the American people, if it is to have any true weight at all.
As Ulysses S. Grant once said, "The will of the people is the best law."
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