Friday, June 14, 2013

Eugene Robinson: Scalia was right

The Supreme Court’s ruling last week, allowing police to compel DNA samples from persons arrested for serious offenses, will solve cold cases around the country and put dangerous criminals behind bars. But despite this clearly beneficial impact, the court’s 5 to 4 ruling was wrong — and may be more far-reaching than we can now imagine.

The words “Antonin Scalia was right” do not flow easily for me. But the court’s most uncompromising conservative, who wrote a withering dissent, was correct when he issued a dire-sounding warning from the bench: “Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.”
Read the rest here.

3 comments:

Matthew M said...

So....................DON'T GET ARRESTED! shessssh.

The Archer of the Forest said...

I would not actually classify Scalia as a "conservative." He's really quite libertarian on some issues. He is actually more complicated politically that most people give him credit for.

gabriel said...

Whether Scalia is conservative or libertarian is irrelevant- he holds to a theory of textual interpretation and the judicial role that is coherent and defensible, and which requires him to leave his policy preferences aside when adjudicating.

Often the results are amenable to conservatives or libertarians (though not always), but that is largely an effect of the fact that the other school of judicial interpretation common in the US allows liberals to implement their liberalism in through an outcome-oriented method of jurisprudence.

Those who care about the rule of law should be thankful for Scalia. Those who think the US constitution, accurately interpreted, will give better results than the vain imaginings of liberal justices should also be grateful for him.