In King vs.
Burwell, the suit challenging the Affordable Care Act and its system of subsidies, Justice Scalia, in
dissent, insisted that the text of the law be read literally. He asked, “Do words
no longer have meaning?” It does not matter how isolated the words. Five
unguarded words in a document that runs to hundreds of pages are enough to sink
the act.
A principled
stand?
One year ago, in
another case, Scalia quoted former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor: We “must do our
best, bearing in mind the fundamental canon of statutory construction that the
words of a statute must be read in their context and with their place in the
overall statutory scheme.”
Later, in the
same opinion, he wrote that “a provision that may seem ambiguous in isolation
is often clarified by the remainder of the statutory scheme” because “only one
of the permissible meanings produces a substantive effect that is compatible
with the rest of the law.”
He is a continual source of amazement to me. What did we do to deserve HIM?
ReplyDeleteWe elected Ronald Reagan, who was smart enough (or his handlers were smart enough) to nominate the first Italian-American Supreme Court Justice.
ReplyDelete