On the Death of Supreme Court Junket King Scalia

[Octafish]

16. The legacy of Antonin Scalia: Get Over It. We're a Police State Now.

One observer noted:

The legacy of Antonin Scalia

By Tom Carter
World Socialist Web Site, 15 February 2016

EXCERPT...

(Hagiography from Dems and pukes alike...) Utter nonsense. Throughout his time on the Supreme Court, Scalia had more in common with a medieval cleric at a witch-burning than a classical bourgeois jurist presiding over a court of law. Scalia determined the result first and then bludgeoned the law into the predetermined shape. Precedent, history and facts were ignored or falsified as necessary to produce the desired result.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan and confirmed unanimously in 1986 by Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress, Scalia’s career on the Supreme Court included some of the following highlights:

The stolen election of 2000. In December 2000, the Supreme Court intervened to halt the counting of votes in Florida and install George W. Bush in the White House. The 5-4 ruling in the case of Bush v. Gore, in which the justices cast their votes according to naked factional interests, was a milestone in the decay of American democracy. According to Scalia, “there is no universal right of suffrage.” When later asked about the ruling, Scalia angrily replied, “Get over it.”

Dictatorship and the “war on terror.” Scalia was a major force behind the infiltration of fascistic doctrines into Supreme Court jurisprudence, under the guise of phrases such as the “unitary executive theory,” “executive privilege,” the “separation of powers,” the president’s role as “commander in chief” and “deference” to the executive. Under these doctrines, the president enjoys unchecked “wartime” powers to override democratic rights, and the courts and judges have no power to intervene. The essential content of these doctrines is indistinguishable from the “state of exception” theory of Nazi “crown jurist” Carl Schmitt (1888-1985).

During Scalia’s tenure on the Supreme Court, the court refused to disturb lower court decisions using “state secrets” doctrine to block challenges to torture, spying and assassination. The Bush and Obama administrations consistently invoked the “state secrets” doctrine to block court proceedings that sought to expose their crimes. For example, lower courts invoked “state secrets” to refuse to hear the case of Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. in 2010, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2011, leaving the lower court decision intact.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/15/scal-f15.html

Wars without end for profits without cease. Amen.