Word: scalias
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sense of just how sharp a break with the past this is, all one has to do is take a look at what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, himself a Roman Catholic, wrote in 2002 in an essay in First Things. "[Abortion involves] ... private individuals whom the state has decided not to restrain. One may argue (as many do) that the society has a moral obligation to restrain. That moral obligation may weigh heavily upon the voter, and upon the legislator who enacts the laws; but a judge, I think, bears no moral guilt for the laws society has failed...
Until the Pelosi statement, the prior instruction from the Church's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and encyclical writing seemed to confirm Scalia's reasoning. There was an implicit understanding that the Church's admonition to its faithful to change the law permitting the choice of abortion had to be understood and applied in light of the scope of office. Catholic legislators make policy and could be so instructed, but judges, as Scalia wrote, had "no moral responsibility for the laws [their] nation has failed to enact...
...Vatican press office mistakenly included the judicial terminology. But taken at its word, the Pope's new admonition to "jurists" to undertake an activist, law-changing role suggests that the concept of Originalism (adhering to the textual meaning of laws at the time of adoption) subscribed to by Scalia and often by three of the four other Catholics on the Supreme Court (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts) is a morally deficient method of constitutional interpretation...
...doubt Scalia would insist that since abortion is not in the constitutional text, disavowing an abortion right would square Scalia and the other Catholic jurists with the Church. But not so fast; Scalia says abortion can be legislatively permitted or not as the people choose, and he will enforce whatever is democratically chosen. That's hardly what the Church is hoping from Catholic jurists, is it? (Read "Obama Tries to Renew Faith in a Faith-Based Office...
...when discussing the death penalty and his faith, Scalia expressed relief that the Church had yet to find the death penalty categorically immoral since that was neither his personal conclusion nor the Originalist position on the Constitution. "I like my job, and would rather not resign," he wrote in 2002. "[I]n my view, the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply the laws and has been given no power...