Interview with Justice Scalia

Stubborn Facts has a link to this nice interview with Justice Antonin Scalia.

As the title shows, the interview goes "beyond politics" into discussions about Scalia's childhood, judicial philosophy, experiences on and off the Court, and more. It's fascinating to watch, if you have 25 minutes to spare.

I like Justice Scalia, which is just another example of my evolution from liberal to conservative (via law school, among other things). I absolutely hated Justice Scalia for many years as a young woman and was contemptuous of his "if it isn't in the wording, then it isn't in the law" judicial philosophy. But having gone through law school and seen the ways judges will tie law into knots to have it say things that aren't there (see Jeromy Brown's analysis of the 9th Amendment), I can now appreciate the simplicity of Scalia's approach.

As the justice himself explains, this approach to constitutional interpretation doesn't mean he always likes the results it warrants (he gives a specific example), but at the end of the day, he thinks he has done what the law requires. And, like me, Scalia believes that if the law needs changing, it should be done through legislation, not the courts.