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Legal Commentary

: Althouse

"Justices Scalia and Thomas disagreed often enough that my friend, Judge Melissa Parr, teaches a class called Scalia Versus Thomas..."/"Well, I?ll wait till the movie comes out."

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From "Amy Coney Barrett Senate Confirmation Hearing Day 2 Transcript."

Lindsey Graham made a joke. The class title ? "Scalia Versus Thomas" ? must have reminded him of all those movie titles ? like "Godzilla vs. Rodan."

Jokes are telling. Isn't it interesting that they're all gathered to grill Barrett on her judicial methods, the question on the floor is "People say that you?re a female Scalia. What would you say?," she's trying to explicate the details, and the pushback is something that translates to: Hey, keep it simple for us dummies and low-attention folk. You're getting into the weeds.

Here's her full answer leading up to Graham's joke. It's not even long:

I would say that justice Scalia was obviously a mentor, and as I said when I accepted the President?s nomination, that his philosophy is mine too. He was a very eloquent defender of originalism, And that was also true of textualism, which is the way that I approach statutes and their interpretation. And similarly to what I just said about originalism, for textualism, the judge approaches the text as it was written with the meaning it had at the time and doesn?t infuse our own meaning into it. But I want to be careful to say that if I?m confirmed, you would not be getting Justice Scalia. You would be getting Justice Barrett. And that?s so because originalists don?t always agree and neither do textualist. Justices Scalia and Thomas disagreed often enough that my friend, Judge Melissa Parr, teaches a class called Scalia Versus Thomas. It?s not a mechanical exercise.

Full post as published by Althouse on October 14, 2020 (boomark / email).