Scalia: arguments and opinions

Re “Scalia Says Constitution Doesn’t Cover Detainees,” March 27

The Times reports that Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia told Newsweek that the Constitution does not protect foreigners held at Guantanamo Bay. Scalia says this just a day before the high court was to hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of this practice in the case of an alleged Al Qaeda driver for Osama bin Laden. Judicial ethics require that a judge who has prejudged a case before the court should recuse -- remove -- himself from the case.

Scalia should get off this case and stop making advance announcements of his opinion before the court decides its cases.

RICHARD L. HUFF

San Diego

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Re “Our loquacious justices,” Opinion, March 28

Jonathan Turley just doesn’t get it. Scalia’s comments in Switzerland, stating his position on the detainee Supreme Court case, show the top-down, MBA kind of thinking that President Bush brought into the executive office. If only the rest of the justices would follow Scalia’s lead (watch for Justice Clarence Thomas to speak out any minute), all of the time, hassle, expenses and distractions of arguments and questions in the actual Supreme Court could be eliminated. Whenever the fifth justice states the same position to the Federalist Society or a Wall Street Journal reporter or whatever, the case would be over. Quick, efficient and easy.

PAT ORMSBEE

Newport Beach

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Turley gets it plain wrong in arguing that judges and justices of the Supreme Court should refrain from public speeches on legal issues. Just three years ago, on 1st Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court struck down a Minnesota law that prohibited candidates for judicial elections from announcing their views on disputed legal and political issues, even if such issues were likely to come before the candidate.

More recently, Justice Scalia dissented from a ruling in which a federal statute that provides for habeas corpus relief to prisoners was extended to Guantanamo detainees as well.

That Scalia now chooses to publicly elaborate on a prior written dissent is the stuff of proper scholarly debate on the subject, and the republic is so much the better for it.

STANISLAUS PULLE

Dean and Professor of Constitutional Law

Southern California Institute of Law

Santa Barbara