Scalia’s role on the Supreme Court

Re “Court’s new tilt could put Scalia on a roll,” Feb. 20

This article is telling. Among other things, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is an “originalist,” which means that he interprets the Constitution according to the meaning attached to it in 1787. What he refuses to acknowledge is that the framers of the Constitution were not writing a document that would be good for 200 years. They wrote it to guide the country in the future. It is full of phrases whose meaning is determined by changes in the way things work, such as “due process of law,” “cruel and unusual punishment,” “freedom of speech.”

Is Scalia saying that the meaning of those phrases cannot change in 200 years?

DAVID BURKENROAD

Los Angeles

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If only Scalia actually confined himself to enforcing the Constitution as written, his Supreme Court votes and opinions would have more consistency and logic. Instead, Scalia is happy allowing the government to exceed its constitutional authority in order to carry out a conservative social agenda. Of course, liberal judges do the same thing on their own set of issues.

The Constitution is neither a conservative nor a liberal document. It is a contract that protects our freedoms by limiting the government’s power. But our freedoms continue to be diminished as the political process appoints both liberal and conservative judges with activist agendas.

FREDERICK SINGER

Huntington Beach

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The article on Scalia accepts at face value the justice’s pose as the faithful guardian of the founders’ original intent. In fact, cases such as Bush vs. Gore and Gonzalez vs. Oregon show that Scalia can be as “outcome-oriented” as his ideological opponents.

In the latter case, a particularly outrageous Scalia dissent discovered in the Constitution a new right for the executive branch to overturn a popular initiative in Oregon that established doctor-assisted suicide. Scalia claimed that the provisions of federal drug legislation -- none of which even mention assisted suicide -- allowed an unprecedented federal role in regulating medical practices in the states and the power to nullify the popular will of the people of Oregon.

When the stakes are high and his Catholic sensibilities are aroused, “original intent” gets discarded and Scalia legislates enthusiastically from the bench.

DANIEL J. STONE MD

Los Angeles