"Scalia's slam of the Voting Rights Act is a bar-stool rant"

[applegrove]

Scalia's slam of the Voting Rights Act is a bar-stool rant

By David Horsey at the LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-scalias-slam-20130228,0,4827828.story

"SNIP.................................................


In court on Wednesday, however, Scalia mocked that vote. He said the Senate’s unanimity simply proved the law had not been given serious consideration. The senators were afraid, he said, to cast a vote against a law with a "wonderful" name. He went on to assert that the reauthorization of the act was merely "a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement."

That sort of legal reasoning may be good enough for someone sitting on a bar stool well into his third pint, but it is not good enough for the highest court in the land. Scalia makes self-serving assumptions about what was on the minds of senators in 2006 -- afraid, not serious, enamored with a name -- with no facts to back up his barbs.

Tossing actual statistics back at Scalia, Justice Elena Kagan cited a string of continued voting-rights violations. As to the state of mind of the senators, she said the unanimous vote was pretty good proof that the evidence of contemporary abuses was convincing, even to conservative Southerners.

"It was clear to 98 senators, including every senator from a covered state, who decided that there was a continuing need for this piece of legislation," Kagan said.

.................................................SNIP"

[Sekhmets Daughter]

1. If Scalia weren't so in love with his own voice...

he would have been a decent justice. I have found, in reading his opinions, that he frequently gets the small stuff right...and much more frequently uses a witty and brilliant writing style to put forth trash on the big issues.