July 31, 2018

"I disagreed with most of what he said, but he said it in such a charming, amusing way. And if truth be told, if I had my choice of dissenters when I was writing for the court..."

"... it would be Justice Scalia, because he was so smart, and he would home in on all the soft spots, and then I could fix up my majority opinion. Sometimes it was like a Ping-Pong game between us."

Said Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking on stage, after a performance of "The Originalist," an off-Broadway play about Justice Scalia, the NYT reports.
For all his bellicosity, the Scalia in “The Originalist” is also a charmer, balancing his ursine ferocity with a thoughtful quietude. Justice Ginsburg, who is 85 and figures in the play only as an offstage presence (“I love Ruth Ginsburg,” Scalia says), painted the real Scalia as a considerate and mischievous colleague who, from the time they were appellate judges together in the 1980s, was not above whispering in her ear or passing her a note to crack her up.

“Scalia was a very good writer, and he did labor over his opinions,” she said. “Both of us did. And sometimes he would come to my chambers, to tell me I had made a grammatical error.” The crowd roared. “I would sometimes tell him his opinion was so strident he would be more persuasive if he toned it down.” A pause, because she knows how to deliver a line. Then: “He never took that advice.”

74 comments:

Phil 314 said...

Is it “home in” or “hone in”?

Gahrie said...

If anybody else on the Left but RBG spoke this way about Scalia they would be savaged the next day. But the Left has too much riding on RBG to even imagine attacking her at this point. I don't wish ill on anyone, and RBG seems like a nice old lady despite her politics; however, a third vacancy for Trump would be nice.

Loren W Laurent said...

"...because he was so smart, and he would home in on all the soft spots, and then I could fix up my majority opinion..."

So she needed Scalia to mansplain it for her?

David Begley said...

RBG has her own hit movie now. What's next? TV talk show appearances? Stand-up? The Daily Show? RBG writing op-eds in the NYT? Oops. Her published opinions in Supreme Court Reports are already op-eds printed at the cost of the government.

Gahrie said...

Is it “home in” or “hone in”?


Home in means to locate and isolate, originally in a physical sense. Hone means to sharpen or improve. So Scalia helped her to home in on her weaknesses, address them and hone her argument.

(some dictionaries consider the terms to be synonyms)

MikeR said...

Well, that's it; she's a goner now, talking like that about such an evil person. Burn!

Matt Sablan said...

This is a nice gesture from her. Let's not over analyze it.

Sebastian said...

"he would be more persuasive if he toned it down"

Is there any example of a prog justice being "persuaded" by a con argument, particularly a written one, to change position?

Not snarky -- asking for real.

Gahrie said...

Is there any example of a prog justice being "persuaded" by a con argument, particularly a written one, to change position?

Well...most of them are anti-Russian and pro-CIA right now....

Phil 314 said...

“Let's not over analyze it.”

You think these blog comments are analysis!?

Etienne said...

When you saw the two together, you just knew they had carnal knowledge.

tim in vermont said...

“I would sometimes tell him his opinion was so strident he would be more persuasive if he toned it down.”

Yes, if you are going to violate the permission structure, better to be more self effacing.

rhhardin said...

It's a nice example of comity, and of the inability of women to comprehend large scale arguments.

rhhardin said...

Now don't try to reason with me.

RBG to Scalia. repurposed New Yorker cartoon.

rhhardin said...

How can an argument be right if it leaves out emotion.

Etienne said...

Phil 3:14 said...Is it “home in” or “hone in”?

You hone in a blade, home in to a target.

Rob said...

“A pause, because she knows how to deliver a line.“

A pause, as she tries to remember what she was talking about.

Ann Althouse said...

"Is it “home in” or “hone in”?"

It's home in, and I was going to comment on her usage, because I was pleased to hear her getting right what so many people get wrong.

Ann Althouse said...

"I would sometimes tell him his opinion was so strident he would be more persuasive if he toned it down."

I wonder if she does that with Sotomayor too. I'll bet she does!

tim in vermont said...

The contribution of emotion to reason comes in the form of a veto on directions of inquiry. It does affect the outcome one arrives at by eliminating without consideration vast numbers of arguments. Her is an example of an argument that emotion will, in many, prevent one to consider: If we had a wall, there would be many fewer problems with illegal border crossers dragging their children along and running afoul of our justice system.

See? Liberals can’t even think that thought because their emotional brain vetos the whole line of inquiry. So Althouse is right when she says that emotion is part of human reasoning. It’s just not any part of formal logic, or arriving at the best possible answer.

Gahrie said...

I would sometimes tell him his opinion was so strident he would be more persuasive if he toned it down.

I wonder if she does that with Sotomayor too. I'll bet she does!


Has RBG ever dissented from Sotomayor? (or vice versa?) I bet not very often if ever. I'm willing to bet that RBG has never found Sotomayor to be controversial, let alone strident.

Gahrie said...

See? Liberals can’t even think that thought because their emotional brain vetos the whole line of inquiry. So Althouse is right when she says that emotion is part of human reasoning. It’s just not any part of formal logic, or arriving at the best possible answer.

I could agree with this if you had written "human thinking" rather than "human reasoning". Reasoning is the process of attempting to eliminate or minimize emotion in thought.

Bay Area Guy said...

Ruthie and Nino sitting in a tree......

Drago said...

Sudden New Respect for the Previous Hitler in order to attack the New Hitlers.

Transparent.

Drago said...

AA: "I wonder if she does that with Sotomayor too. I'll bet she does!"

A Wise Latina requires no such advice.

tim in vermont said...

I could agree with this if you had written “human thinking" rather than "human reasoning".

True enough! The other role that emotion plays in thinking is that it prevents a person from examining certain objections to arguments. For instance Chuck can’t understand, because he hates Trump so much, why we don’t think the wiretapping claim was any kind of “lie.” It’s because emotion prevents him from listening to our objections to his argument.

Emotion is a trap, and maybe the reason men have successfully dominated our “equals” over just about all of human history is that we are better at removing emotion from our thinking. You can’t get too emotional about killing animals to feed the village, for example. Intercepting a heard of bison takes spatial reasoning, planning, calm deliberation. Finding the same blueberry patch you have been exploiting for millennia takes no such effort.

Virgil Hilts said...

Gahrie asked whether RBG and SRS ever dissent from each other. For this last term they did vote together the most at 96%, per Scotusblog http://www.scotusblog.com/statistics/. Clarence Thomas and SRS are the most opposite - 51%.

Andrew said...

You can agree with Scalia's opinions 100%, and still believe that at times, if he had used a less strident and belligerent tone, he might have been writing a majority or concurring opinion rather than a dissent. Like it or not, building a majority is part of the job.

His dissenting opinions are often masterpieces, but insulting your fellow justices isn't the best way to move the Supreme Court in your direction.

Chuck said...

I am sure there are examples, maybe some good examples, of a case where Ginsburg wrote a majority opinion and Scalia wrote a stinging dissent. But there aren't that many. The hottest Scalia dissents were in the homosexual rights cases where only Kennedy wrote the majority opinions. There was the Casey Martin case where Scalia ridiculed the majority opinion, but that didn't involve Ginsburg. Honestly, the only recent Ginsburg-Scalia opinion writing battle that I can think of is the Arizona Redistricting Commission case.

Incidentally, the first case that I'd like to see a Justice Kavanaugh reverse is that Arizona Redistricting Commission case.

Andrew said...

Or as Emperor Joseph II said in Amadeus: "You are passionate, Mozart, but you do not persuade."

Ralph L said...

Clarence Thomas and SRS are the most opposite - 51%.
That's unexpectedly high. Does that mean half of SCOTUS decisions are nearly unanimous? Are they rubber-stamping, or are the district courts often way wayward?

traditionalguy said...

Twisting the Constitutional law into a pretzel just to prove that you are the Justice with the power to screw us over and to insert it into Stare Decisis is so very charming. It brings to mind the saying, " With a Supreme Court like that, who needs enemies."

Chuck said...

tim in vermont said...
I could agree with this if you had written “human thinking" rather than "human reasoning".

True enough! The other role that emotion plays in thinking is that it prevents a person from examining certain objections to arguments. For instance Chuck can’t understand, because he hates Trump so much, why we don’t think the wiretapping claim was any kind of “lie.” It’s because emotion prevents him from listening to our objections to his argument.


tim, my argument was so basic! If Trump had any sort of credible argument that Obama "wiretapped" Trump Tower, he could make it. If Trump fans think that it was okay for Trump to put out those tweets that personalized it ("bad -- or sick -- guy") as to Obama, all that I ever asked was that it be made clear what the charge was.

The implication was/is that Trump and his campaign were illegally spied upon per order of Obama. What was the order? When was it given? How was it given? With the entire fucking reach of the Executive Branch, Trump could order the immediate declassification of anything that was needed, to expose an Obama plot to wiretap Trump Tower.

And yet nothing like that has ever been done. Trump has never sat with any reporter or group of reporters or investigators to explain what he was tweeting about. If it was an illegal wiretap by Obama, the Department of Justice and the FBI ought to be investigating it. But the simple fact is that all of the security services have gone on the record saying that there was never anything like a "wiretap of Trump Tower."

And yes, I think that it was a phony, bullshit claim by Trump. I think that anyone who believes it is a fool.

steve uhr said...

The collective head of the conservative commenters explodes as they try to contemplate how one could possibly be friends with one with different political views.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“A Wise Latina requires no such advice”

Anyone who would refer to themselves as a “wise Latina” is far too brittle to ever heed the advice of others. Quite apart from ideology, that remark alone would be enough to disqualify her in the judgement of anyone who understands human nature.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“The collective head of the conservative commenters explodes as they try to contemplate how one could possibly be friends with one with different political views.”

0654 PST and we already have a winner in the daily Unintentional Irony and Total Removal From Reality contest.

tim in vermont said...

The collective head of the conservative commenters explodes as they try to contemplate how one could possibly be friends with one with different political views.

LOL! I have lots of liberal friends. I have lost more than a couple since Trump was elected, and not from my side. And I refuse to even discuss politics with friends. The most I will do is not join in the Trump bashing. That’s enough to lose friendship with many liberals, or to prevent them from forming.

Gahrie said...

The collective head of the conservative commenters explodes as they try to contemplate how one could possibly be friends with one with different political views

It's not conservatives doing this, it is the Left. Anytime someone on the Left says something that can be interpreted as nice about or to someone on the Right, the outrage mob immediately forces them to take it back or be lynched. The most recent case that comes to mind was when a relatively obscure actor tweeted something faintly praising Ben Shapiro, he was forced to retract and apologize within a day.

tim in vermont said...

tim, my argument was so basic! If Trump had any sort of credible argument that Obama “wiretapped" Trump Tower, he could make it.

Then tell me how transcripts of private conversations from the Trump campaign ended up in the New York Times as leaked from the government?

Not answering that question was my point about how you can’t follow certain lines of thinking because your hatred of Trump prevents it.

Andrew said...

By the way, I don't think RBG was talking to Scalia about persuading her. More likely she was talking about Justices who were more inclined to take his side.

In his early years on the S Ct, Scalia could be brutal to Rehnquist, O'Connor, etc. It's gratifying to read, but again, persuasion is better than creating bad blood.

I had a law professor who was very liberal, but respected Scalia as an intellectual giant. This professor said, "Thank God that Nino is a bomb thrower, or he'd get his way far more often."

tim in vermont said...

And by “government,” I mean the Obama administration.

tim in vermont said...

In his early years on the S Ct, Scalia could be brutal to Rehnquist, O'Connor, etc. It’s gratifying to read, but again, persuasion is better than creating bad blood.

Hah! That’s the same kind of behavior that got Gordon Bombay Esq. forced to coach The Mighty Ducks!

Dude1394 said...

The democrat lynch mobs won’t like this much. But because they need to prop her up like weekend at Bernie’s, they will stay quiet.

Drago said...

steve uhr: "The collective head of the conservative commenters explodes as they try to contemplate how one could possibly be friends with one with different political views."

I'm sorry if the actual words and deeds of your beloved lefties/dems is too much for you to internalize.

Good luck in the future.

Drago said...

Gahrie: "It's not conservatives doing this, it is the Left."

Uhr spends most of his time projecting onto republicans/conservatives that which the dems/left are doing.

We are probably just weeks away from Uhr asserting a republican shot up a democrat baseball practice.

Drago said...

"Dick Durbin Republican" Chuck: "tim, my argument was so basic! If Trump had any sort of credible argument that Obama "wiretapped" Trump Tower, he could make it."

This has already been established beyond a shadow of a doubt, which is why your democrat/lefty allies long ago moved away from the "it never happened" line of defense to the "it was completely justified" line of defense.

That you attempt to keep arguing the previous narrative position of your democrat/lefty operational allies just adds another data point onto the mountain of other data points about your true self-described Smear Merchant status here.

Drago said...

Unknown: "The democrat lynch mobs won’t like this much"

Careful now. According to Uhr these democrat lynch mobs (who often labeled Scalia another "literally Hitler") don't exist.

By referencing these mobs that clearly do exist, you will cause Uhr's head to explode and will trigger the inevitable "LLR Chuck Dem/Lefty Defense Mode" wherein the more despicable behavior the dem exhibits the stronger LLR Chuck's defense of said dem will be.

rcocean said...

When was Scalia ever "Bellicose"?

Ginsberg is a ACLU Leftist. The MSM always tries to paint her as "Mainstream" and anyone who wants judicial decisions "Tethered to the constitution" as Right-wing extremists.

From what I've read Scalia was a gregarious, friendly man, who got along with everyone. Even Ginsburg.

I've never been impressed with Ginsberg's opinions. But at least she has an judicial philosophy, which is more than you can say for Kennedy or O'Connor.

rcocean said...

I've noticed that whenever you read about these "across the aisle" friendships, 9/10 its the conservative/Republican who's initiated it.

One would think Ginsberg would've struck up a friendship with O'Connor since they were close in age, and were both women.

But evidently not.

Darrell said...

From the NYT, interviewing RBG--
A second deadlock, in United States v. Texas, left in place a nationwide injunction blocking Mr. Obama’s plan to spare more than four million unauthorized immigrants from deportation and allow them to work. That was unfortunate, Justice Ginsburg said, but it could have been worse.

“Think what would have happened had Justice Scalia remained with us,” she said. Instead of a single sentence announcing the tie, she suggested, a five-justice majority would have issued a precedent-setting decision dealing a lasting setback to Mr. Obama and the immigrants he had tried to protect.


Thanks for being happy that I died, Ruth. I expect no less from you. And no more.

--Zombie Scalia

Yancey Ward said...

Chuck, Carter Page was under a FISA warrant that allowed the monitoring/excavation of electronic material of anyone he was in contact with along with anyone that person was in contact with. This is pretty much everyone in the Trump Campaign by simple logic.

tim in vermont said...

He won't answer. Chuck is captive to his child brain when it comes to Trump.

tim maguire said...

Drago said...
Sudden New Respect for the Previous Hitler in order to attack the New Hitlers.

Transparent.


The friendship between Scalia and Ginsburg has been well known and commented on for decades.

tim maguire said...

Why are we still talking about whether or not Trump was wiretapped!? That was settled ages ago.

He was. It's not a debating point anymore.

Qwinn said...

Chuck's argument re: Trump being a massive liar when he said he was wiretapped was pedantic and lame, but (barely) defensible when he first made it.

If he's still maintaining it in light of the avalanche of evidence of the Left's spying on Trump's campaign that has come out since, he has voluntarily eliminated even the pretense of intellectual honesty on his part.

Tina Trent said...

@David Begley: absolutely right. It is distasteful that Ginsberg is making herself a spectacle. Judges appointed for life should show some humility towards their station. They are granted extraordinary political power: they should not exploit it with public relations campaigns, let alone promotion by the entertainment industry.

Tenure seems to destroy institutions in the modern world.

Drago said...

Qwinn: "If he's still maintaining it in light of the avalanche of evidence of the Left's spying on Trump's campaign that has come out since, he has voluntarily eliminated even the pretense of intellectual honesty on his part."

LLR Chuck proudly proclaimed that he was only here to smear Trump.

That explains that.

readering said...

The game on the S. Ct. is to get to 5. Scalia did not play that game particularly well. The Dems who got votes from O'Connor and Kennedy, like Ginsburg, did.

Jim at said...

The collective head of the conservative commenters explodes as they try to contemplate how one could possibly be friends with one with different political views. -

Liberals are more likely to unfriend you over politics — online and off

jimbino said...

RBG still needs help with her grammar. She fails to observe English rules of sequence of tenses.

And if truth be told, if I had my choice of dissenters when I was writing for the court, it would be Justice Scalia, because he was so smart, and he would home in on all the soft spots, and then I could fix up my majority opinion.

is properly written

And if truth be told, if I had had my choice of dissenters when I was writing for the court it would have been Justice Scalia, because he was so smart, and he would home in on all the soft spots, and then I could fix up my majority opinion.

Earnest Prole said...

The game on the S. Ct. is to get to 5. Scalia did not play that game particularly well. The Dems who got votes from O'Connor and Kennedy, like Ginsburg, did.

Scalia was playing the long game. His dissents influenced an entire generation of future judges.

Chuck said...

Yancey Ward said...
Chuck, Carter Page was under a FISA warrant that allowed the monitoring/excavation of electronic material of anyone he was in contact with along with anyone that person was in contact with. This is pretty much everyone in the Trump Campaign by simple logic.


So is that the story now? That the FISA warrants for Carter Page communications = "wiretapping Trump Tower"? I have never heard anybody from the Trump Administration do a detailed summary of that. If true, it would be an important allegation ("wiretapping Trump Tower"). Trump has never, ever said anything to the effect of, "When I tweeted about Obama being a bad or sick guy, what I meant was the affair involving the FISA warrants regarding Carter Page..."

Are you saying that?

tim in vermont said...

So Chuck still won’t explain how transcripts of conversations ended up leaked by the Obama administration to the New York Times. Why Trump owes Chuck a detailed explanation of what a bunch of lawbreakers in the previous administration did is beyond me.

tim in vermont said...

As for how Trump knows, the fact that transcripts of trump campaign and transition conversations ended up leaked to the New York Times would be enough evidence for any normal person.

tim in vermont said...

When Trump made the accusation, the leaked transcripts stopped appearing because now the narrative was “we never spied on Trump!” where before it was, "here is a contextless snippet that can make Trump look bad, run with it!”

tim in vermont said...

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/

For one thing, “cybersecurity experts” were rummaging through the DNS logs of Trump’s email server, which was engaged in the nefarious practice of sending out email ads for Trumps luxury properties, some of which landed at Alhpa Bank in Russia. When Trump figured out that people at his own ISP were leaking his private communications to the media with ridiculous spin, Greenwald does a great job of knocking it down, as a retired professional in the field of network surveillance, I can tell you that he got almost every detail right, when Trump rightfully changed ISPs, a story comes out that he took steps to avoid scrutiny of his data, as if that wasn’t the exact thing any responsible manager in that situation would do. I would have sued the ISP too, myself, but there was a lot going on.

Darrell said...

Chuck must like fucking the chicken because he never stops. Trump owes nobody any explanations when his point was dead-on and factual: He was "wiretapped."

tim in vermont said...

The New York Times on Thursday revealed the names of two White House officials who helped Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) obtain information suggesting Trump transition officials were inadvertently swept up in surveillance operations. - HuffPo

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/us/politics/devin-nunes-wiretapping-trump.html

Rick said...

Gahrie said...
If anybody else on the Left but RBG spoke this way about Scalia they would be savaged the next day.


Not anymore. All the left's hated figures transition to honorable opponents once they're safely dead and can be used against their current enemies.

Chuck said...

I don't give a damn about what any of you think about the laughable Trump tweets claiming that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.

And I don't give a damn, about what Trump thinks; he's clearly not going to do anything about it. He's had far more than a year to explain what he thinks happened, and do something about it. He hasn't explained, and he hasn't done anything about it.

Because Trump's a pussy, and a trashtalker, and a liar.

Like many of you. You've all got your knickers in a twist over this; many of you seem to really think that in some concepetual way, Trump Tower was wiretapped. And I think you're all full of shit. No one is ever going to be prosecuted or disciplined for "wiretapping Trump Tower" at the direction of Barack Obama. If you think I am wrong on this, tell me when and how it is going to happen.

Darrell said...

Because Trump's a pussy, and a trashtalker, and a liar.

No, you're looking in the mirror again. . .

Trumpit said...

I have some advice for him that I'm sure he will take: Stay dead, you "guns and ammo" bum.

tim in vermont said...

I don't give a damn about what any of you think about the laughable Trump tweets claiming that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.

That's Chuck's child brain talking, his emotional brain. Notice that he has no cogent response, no lawyerly rebuttal to shred us all and roast us on a spit over the intense wattage of his super brain, no that's just in his fantasies. He can't concede that Trump was wiretapped. The fucking New York Times prints an article attacking the people in the administration who told Congress what was going on, warning everybody else that these guys were squealing about where the transcripts of Trump organization conversations were coming from.

That's not a problem? Of course not because Chuck HATES Trump and that's all that matters, not the evidence, not the admissions, not nothing, because Chuck can't concede when Chuck is wrong.

Wow, this is even funnier than Trumpit's "That's not funny!" post yesterday.

Gahrie said...

Trump's biggest sin is he's actually doing the stuff that the GOP Establishment promised to do, but never did.