| During
his tenure on the United States Supreme Court, Justice
Scalia has led a continuous assault on judicial tinkering.
The rule of law, he has argued, demands that we be bound by
the text of the law—not by evolving social standards, not
even by some elusive authorial intent, but by the actual
words of the Constitution and of the statutes passed by
state and federal legislatures.
Scalia has articulated this
textualist philosophy in his frequent public lectures, in
his penetrating book A Matter of Interpretation,
and in his many Supreme Court opinions. In Scalia
Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court’s Wittiest, Most
Outspoken Justice, attorney Kevin A. Ring collects some
of the most memorable of these opinions. The stated aim of
this volume is to bring to a wider audience “some of the
most noteworthy, colorful, and entertaining opinions ever
written by a United States Supreme Court Justice.” More
important, the collection traces the development of
Scalia’s view—derided by progressive law professors and
controversial even among conservatives—that, in Ring’s
words, “laws—and especially that supreme law known as
the Constitution of the United States—say what they mean
and mean what they say.”
Over
the past twenty years, perhaps the happiest outcome of the
Court’s many miserable decisions is that they provide
Scalia with occasions for writing opinions that are both
persuasive and entertaining. This book contains many. This
well-organized volume gives readers not only an introduction
to Scalia’s thought but a guided tour through the
difficult issues the Supreme Court has addressed in recent
years. Read together, Scalia’s opinions are a bracing
antidote to the legal opportunism that has infected many of
the Court’s recent decisions. They are also a troubling
reminder that the infection continues to spread.
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