Brain Fertilizer

Via Q and O Blog comes this excellent point by Justice Scalia:

Scalia said increased politics on the court will create a bitter nomination fight for the next Supreme Court appointee, since judges are now more concerned with promoting their personal policy preferences rather than interpreting the law.

"If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us," he said, explaining that's why senators increasingly probe nominees for their personal views on positions such as abortion.

"When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless," Scalia said.

McQ echoes that point with his own words, worth repeating:

The future battle for the replacement of retiring justices obviously looms large. In my opinion the placing of anymore justices such as Anthony Kennedy, who feels the use of foreign precedent is acceptable and sees it as the court's job to decide on "notions of evolving decency" ( "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.") instead of strict Constitutional relevancy will spell the death knell of our Constitutional way of life. It will open an era of activist courts from which we might never be able to recover and it would cement in place the tyranny of the minority .... the black clad coterie of jurists who would decide what is "decent" and what isn't.