Said Teddy Roosevelt, quoted by the L.A. Times in an effort to make a contrast to something Justice Scalia wrote in the same-sex marriage case:
[T]he Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross-section of America. Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers 18 who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single Southwesterner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans 19 ), or even a Protestant of any denomination.Seems to me that TR and Scalia were saying the same thing about California. But the L.A. Times says TR "understood the synergy of geography and nationhood better than his fellow Harvard man, Scalia." Teddy was saying there's "the West" and something beyond it, further to the west, but not The West.
The Times tries to put some definition into the idea of the West: "home to people from all over the world who have the gumption to pull up stakes from placid and settled places and start fresh, to invent and reinvent themselves and this country."
Okay, but I'm not seeing that definition in TR's statement. He's talking about the similarity to the settled "thoughts and... ideals" of the East. He's saying we coasties are alike and those people who are stuck in the middle are not like us.
Put California with the rest of the West if you like, but if this is an appeal to the authority of Theodore Roosevelt, Scalia wins.
Who are the (non-genuine) Westerners on the Court?
Justice Breyer comes from San Francisco, California.
And Justice Kennedy was born and raised in Sacramento. His father was a lawyer and a lobbyist active in the California legislature. Kennedy took over his father's practice and "had a talent for socializing and soon made many friends among the influential Californian politicians." That got him connected to Ronald Reagan, who eventually put him on the Supreme Court.
We associate Ronald Reagan with California, but he was originally from "the vast expanse in-between" (to use Scalia's phrase). So who's the only Justice from the vast expanse? It's Chief Justice Roberts. He's a Hoosier.
By the way, all 3 female Justices are from New York City, but they've got borough diversity — Ginsburg's from Brooklyn, Sotomayor is from the Bronx, and Kagan's from Manhattan. While we're in the area, it's worth noting that both Scalia and Alito are from New Jersey.
So now, there's only one Justice I haven't named here. It's Clarence Thomas. He provides the diversity of the South. (Note that Scalia only said there was no Southwesterner.) Thomas comes from Georgia — "from beside the Atlantic" where Teddy Roosevelt found his "own people, with the same thoughts and the same ideals."
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Neither coast follows the Constitution, would be the point.
Really, we don't care where they're from. What we care about is whether they will support and defend the Constitution of the United States; that they will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that they will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office.
Their is ample evidence that many of our Supreme Court justices have not done so. Unfortunately the constitutional remedy for this, impeachment, is all but unthinkable and not politically feasible.
I wonder if the percentage of Americans who think California is not the West but rather "west of the West" would track closely with the percentage of Americans who think Florida is not the South but rather "south of the South."
Sandra Day O'Connor was born in Texas, and raised in Arizona on a cattle ranch. Her family was wealthy, but she knew what bull shit smelled like on her boots.
I think non-coastal Westerners, and I include the interior, rural parts of Washington, Oregon, and California tend to have some Libertarian strain even in the Democrats. I think it comes in part because of the large amount of Federal land out West and the imposition of Admin law in lives, that Blue areas don't notice. e.g. 86% of Nevada is Federal land.
California is California. It is a place unto itself. San Francisco is a place separate even from California.
And yes, Teddy and Scalia were saying the same thing.
It sounded like Scalia was calling on some of his fellow Catholics on the court to resign to make room for an Evangelical or two.
The problem with most dissents is that people don't pay enough attention to them. "Attention" is about the best a dissent can do, since the majority rules and writes the final order.
Thank goodness for the LA Times (and for Justice Scalia's historic legal writing talents); making sure that the dissents in Obergefell will be long remembered.
As some serious modern legal scholars consider some full- or partial-reversal of Roe v. Wade, let us recall that the 1973 Roe decision was a fractured supermajority, with only Rhenquist and White dissented. There were a variety of lukewarm concurrences in the result, and just the two strong dissents. Roe v. Wade, for all of its subsequent contention, wasn't nearly so controversial at the time as is the case with same sex marriage.
Contrast with Roe with Obergefell, where only one justice stood between that decision and a diametrically opposite result. Should a Ginsburg or a Sotomayor depart the court in 2017 with a President Walker and a Republican Senate, we could see a very big reversal. (Including, perhaps, a Supreme Court justice confirmed over objections of a Democratic minority via the 'nuclear option.')
It's called flyover country for a reason. Gotta land somewhere.
California today has nothing in common with Roosevelt or with the California he knew. Even San Francisco was a normal place then. Read Jack London's "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang" to see what it was like then.
Imagine Jack London's Frisco as queer paradise! Can't be done.
MayBee said...
California is California. It is a place unto itself. San Francisco is a place separate even from California.
Rural inland Northern California is more like the Mountain West than it is like coastal California.
most people think of California as the land of fruits and nuts.
"I wonder if the percentage of Americans who think California is not the West but rather "west of the West" would track closely with the percentage of Americans who think Florida is not the South but rather 'south of the South.'"
I grew up in Florida, (after being born and spending my first 8 years in the midwest), and as you point out, it is NOT "the south," at least not in the way the other southern states are.
California could be considered the furthest eastern edge of the far east, yes?
With Florida it depends where you are. The panhandle is the South. Miami is not. Hank Williams, Jr. had that figured out a long time ago.
Also depends where you are in California. Take a look at the county map of the last election. The coast is almost all blue, the interior is mostly red. Of course, the coast is more populated.
People got to SF in boats, direct from the East Coast. People got to the interior places overland.
Real American said...
most people think of California as the land of fruits and nuts.
The theory was taught in my California 4th grade, circa 1959. Google Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis.
It fits my experience with California...
Weren't TR and Scalia commenting on two very different Californias?
Spent summers on my Uncle's farm in the San Joaquin Valley when I was young. My job was to bring in the cows for milking at 0300. For those in this audience, you have my sympathy if you never walked Old Bessie from the furthest corner of the furthest pasture to the holding pen as the sun rose over Mt. Whitney, you have my sympathy. Measure a farmer by how straight he plows the field and keeps an eye on the horizon around him in case a tractor hasn't moved and should have or smoke from a haystack about to catch fire. Plowing another neighbor's field if he/she is under the weather at harvest time, etc. We looked up and felt sorry for those flying over us who lose touch with the earth. Their loss.
It's not hard to see why TR said that. Because the frontier kept moving. And the West Coast was settled before the frontier was.
San Francisco was founded in 1776. Astoria, Oregon was founded in 1811. Tombstone, Arizona--whose Westernness I'm sure will not be questioned, was founded in 1877.
It's like how the Old Northwest includes Ohio. That's why we say "Pacific Northwest" instead of just "Northwest." It's why Northwestern University is in Illinois.
Spend some time in Alturas CA. No different than Lakeview or Burns OR, which are not much different from SW Idaho (the exception being Boise). TR was stressing the fact that while there were regional differences we are all Americans with a common culture (vide his later writings against hypenated Americans as well as the fact that he took it upon himself to bridge the division between the North and South since his father was from an old Knickerbocker family while his Mother was from the Antebellum plantation aristocracy).
Complementing the three-borough diversity of the female justices, a fourth borough, Queens, claims Scalia himself (who though born in Trenton, NJ, was brought to Queens by his family at age six). Only Staten Island lacks a Supreme Court justice today.
Scalia rang their bell again, and thus more bullshit in response to truth.
@khematite:Only Staten Island lacks a Supreme Court justice today.
Such an important constituency should not go unrepresented.
Based purely on physical geography, San Francisco is an absolutely beautiful city. Even Berkeley across the Bay is stunning, too, particularly in the hills. It's the water and the hills. Marin, which connects to SF via the Golden Gate Bridge is also spectacular. Redwoods, lakes, beaches, greenery.
However, the people and culture here are a bit wacked. I think that's what Scalia was alluding to.
Something like only 28% of the people own homes here. The simple dream of owning a home has turned into an unobtainable quest for young people. It's also nearly impossible to raise kids in SF. Too expensive, no yards, no communities. The blacks have been fleeing SF for decades.
It's a left-wing brew of yuppies, gays, young single people, elitists, and Asians, living in a really beautiful city.
San Francisco used to be a city of working class Catholics, for the most part.
That is the city of the 19th-early 20th century architecture.
Italians, Irish, South Germans, and quite a lot of "Hispanics", avant la lettre.
The residential areas were obviously planned with the input of the Archdiocese, sometime in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, with block and half-block lots allocated to Catholic church-parochial school complexes evenly and strategically distributed.
A very conventional, aspirational, and bourgeois lot by the standards of the current residents.
These were the craftsmen that made all the architecture that the present population wants to preserve. The moderns despise the creators though, and seem to assume the beauty of the man-made sort came from nowhere.
And when someone is in Miami, Florida, then, that someone is south of the south.
Justice Scalia said anyway that California isn't really part of the west.
and seem to assume the beauty of the man-made sort came from nowhere.
They seem to assume that it ame from previous generations, which is actually correct.
The saying goes that the further north you go in Florida,, the furtehr "south" you get.
Now that new Florida probably doesn't go back much before the mid-1920s.
My point is they hate the previous generations whose works they value.
They like what they made but they gleefully deride and degrade the people.
And their successors of this time, it goes without saying.
I believe that in most cases they don't even think of the makers of what they value, and do indeed implicitly assume it all sprung from the earth as did the bay and the hills.
It is often surprising just how mindless, unreflective, and incurious the moderns are.
But Scalia is certainly correct that if you wanted to choose 9 people to decide social issues for the entire country, it would be hard to find a less representative group than the justices of the U. S. Supreme Court.
Of course, the Gay Rights Clause of the Constitution made it a pretty easy decision, even for graduates of Harvard and Yale.
By the way, all 3 female Justices are from New York City, but they've got borough diversity — Ginsburg's from Brooklyn, Sotomayor is from the Bronx, and Kagan's from Manhattan. While we're in the area, it's worth noting that both Scalia and Alito are from New Jersey.
LOL. As you can tell by the quality of their opinions relative to those of the former three.
Whatever Scalina's trying to say, it's desperate. As always.
The dig is at Anthony Kennedy, as Sacramento is not on the West Coast. Scalia is probably missing Byron White, the last genuine Westerner on the Court. But the second to last was William O. Douglas, so Scalia should be careful what he wishes.
Culturally San Francisco was fairly normal up until about 1955 when it became the epicenter of the beat generation. It never looked back.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
The dig is at Anthony Kennedy, as Sacramento is not on the West Coast. Scalia is probably missing Byron White, the last genuine Westerner on the Court. But the second to last was William O. Douglas, so Scalia should be careful what he wishes.
Actually, it took a well-organized PR campaign to persuade FDR and other political leaders in 1939 that the Minnesota-born Douglas was genuinely a Westerner:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsch.12065/pdf
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