My favorite Supreme Court justice

Magic mirror on the wall,

who's the most Constitution-friendly justice of all?

If you listen enough to the rhetoric of the left, you know the party line that Antonin Scalia is Public Enemy #1, and that Clarence Thomas routinely takes his marching orders from him.  I hadn't really pondered the question of which justice has the greatest fealty to the 'strict construction' philosophy of constitutional interpretation (to paraphrase Horton the elephant, the Constitution says what it means and means what it says -- no ifs, ands, buts, penumbras or emanations about it).  If someone had buttonholed me on the street and demanded an answer, I might have said Scalia, since he's the one who gets all of the press (Thomas doesn't actually exist, since everyone in the media knows that there's no such thing as a black conservative).

As it turns out, though, a law.com article reveals that Thomas boldly and routinely goes where Scalia is often reluctant to go.  In his biography of Thomas, Ken Foskett quotes Scalia as saying that Thomas "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period."  Foskett considers this to be a "bombshell", although Steve at Southern Appeal says the fact is well-known in the legal community.

Stare decisis, Latin for "to stand by decided matters", refers to the doctrine that gives weight to judicial precedents.  If there is a string of Supreme Court decisions on a matter, Scalia is much more likely to uphold the issue on the basis of the precedents, even if he is uneasy with the soundness of the constitutional reasoning behind the precedents.

Thomas, on the other hand, believes that if a previous decision is constitutionally suspect, it has no weight whatsoever.  Continuing Scalia's quote:

"If a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let's get it right," says Scalia. "I wouldn't do that."

As much as I admire Scalia, Thomas is in the right here.  If you're driving from Washington to New York and you see an exit sign for Atlanta, the solution is not to keep driving and hope everything turns out right.

I understand even more now why the left hates Thomas so much.  Not only is he conservative, he's also one of the best friends the Constitution has had in recent generations.

(Credit: The Corner)