Justice Antonin Scalia was born in 1936 in New Jersey. He is of strong Catholic roots, has 9 children, and was appointed in 1986 to the United States Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. Blah, blah, blah.

All people really want to know is when he/she is going to die (or retire) and what is his or her political sway. If we were looking at issues of overpopulation then we might care about the minute details of Scalia’s life, but that is not really the concern. The matter is how are these judges going to interpret our law, the Constitution.

Justice Scalia, whose distinguished black robe was absent, spoke at Drake University last Wednesday to discuss the Constitution. In Drake’s Knapp Center roughly 300 people assembled to hear Scalia’s philosophy of interpretation. Most there already knew what to expect.

You could hear people in the audience mockingly saying things like, “Oh, Scalia’s my favorite,” as if he was some kind of movie star. My personal favorite remark from the peanut gallery was, “Let’s throw dictionaries at him since he cites them more than any other source.” I think the returned comment was something like, “I would, but I am afraid of the conservatives.”

Scalia is just that, a conservative. However, he would rather be referred to as an originalist. To him, this means that he interprets the Constitution in a way that he feels best matches the original understanding of the law. This is in opposition to what he views as a plague that reaches all the way to elementary students, the Living Constitution interpretation. He readily admits his way has become the minority view.

“I am sorry to say,” Scalia opened, “that after 210 years of engaging in this enterprise we don’t all agree on what we’re doing.” He is making reference to the battle of the living vs. his dead constitution.

Quite honestly, I was rather disappointed when I realized he was more interested in bashing the opposing view than explaining his own. I did not grasp that concept until partway through his speech he said, “Those who believe in the Living Constitution are absolutely wrong.” They are not just kind of wrong, or maybe wrong, or even simply wrong. Those people are absolutely wrong. This comment was definitely offensive to me, and absolutely ignorant. Scalia’s main argument against the Living Constitution theory was that “willful” judges would read into the constitution anything that they wanted to be there.

Personally, I cannot proclaim he is absolutely wrong on that issue. Whether it is reading in that the right to life bans abortion or the cruel and unusual punishment clause outlaws the death penalty, judges will read in what they think the best definition is and we trust them to do that.

That trust dates all the way back to a court case in 1803 called Marbury v. Madison. The case basically defined the role of judicial review in the United States and placed a check on the legislature preventing them from willfully passing any law they so pleased. Scalia says get rid of it. This idea of judicial review cannot be found in the Constitution so it must be absolutely wrong.

During the time when the Constitution was created, I fail to believe that the Framers could have thought of everything. They did not have the technology that we have today. They could not have possibly been thinking when they created the right against illegal search and seizure that this would also cover roving wiretaps. They did not even know what a wiretap was. Times have indeed changed so dramatically that it is essential for the Constitution to be able to do the same.

Justice Scalia does not ignore the fact that society changes. He does not necessarily feel, though, that he is capable of comprehending how much it does. “I have no idea what the evolving standards of decency are. I’d be afraid to ask,” exclaimed Scalia, bringing a strong amount of laughter to the crowd of 300.

I do not know what they are either. Also, I would be lying if I did not say I agree, to a degree, with Justice Scalia on certain matters. It is dangerous to have non-elected representatives basically creating laws because they feel it should be so. The concept is “powerfully seductive,” as Scalia put it.

In this way, Scalia reminds me of my father. Scalia, like my dad, is good at showing the other side of the argument and making you believe it for a second. Both are convincing, just not completely persuasive. The Constitution needs to be able to adapt as new technologies are introduced. Because of this I will defend the living over the dead any day. Sorry, Justice Scalia, but you are still in the minority.

Ayrel Clark

is a sophomore in journalism

and mass communication from Johnston.