Monday, July 03, 2006

Scalia: Liar or Idiot?

Well known and highly resepected American criminologist Samuel Walker -- unlike many famous academics he has been at one school, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, for most of his career -- accuses Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia of wrongly citing his work "to support a terrible decision, holding that the exclusionary rule — which for decades prevented evidence obtained illegally by police from being used at trial — no longer applies when cops enter your home without knocking."

While this could have other effects, consider if criminologists and criminal justicians complained when their work is misused by policy makers. And that happens every day. Consider the reach and influence of the Supreme Court, this is quite interesting.

Is Scalia using whatever academic and legal materials are on hand to support his conclusions even if the materials and the arguments (or his position) don't match? Interesting, if albeit a little scary. Is Scalia a liar? In a time where facts are not just stupid things (Ronald Reagan) but they have become irrelevant (Bush, jr), the fact that a member of the Supreme Court would take a writer's words out of context to justify the opposite opinion means either Scalia is stupid (see Reagan again) or he deliberately misused a writer's ideas to support a political position that he had taken regardless of the facts or writing on it.

Call me crazy, but isn't that a bad position for a member of the Supreme Court?

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