Scalia: Let the People Decide

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia gave a speech last night in which he urged that important decisions on such things as abortion and gay marriage be made by the public:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia railed against the era of the "judge-moralist," saying judges are no better qualified than "Joe Sixpack" to decide moral questions such as abortion and gay marriage.

"Anyone who thinks the country's most prominent lawyers reflect the views of the people needs a reality check," he said during a speech to New England School of Law students and faculty at a Law Day banquet on Wednesday night.

The 70-year-old justice said the public, through elected legislatures - not the courts - should decide watershed questions such as the legality of abortion.

Scalia decried his own court's recent overturning of a state anti-sodomy law, joking that he personally believes "sexual orgies eliminate tension and ought to be encouraged," but said a panel of judges is not inherently qualified to determine the morality of such behavior.

He pointed to the granting of voting rights to women in 1920 through a constitutional amendment as the proper way for a democracy to fundamentally change its laws.

"Judicial hegemony" has replaced the public's right to decide important moral questions, he said. Instead, he said, politics has been injected in large doses to the process of nominating and confirming federal judges.

This is exactly the right approach to these important legal issues. Liberals have long tried to enact their agenda through judicial activism, and some conservatives would have the courts strike down abortion or gay marriage. I've always been in favor of returning those issues to the states where they belong (which is exactly what would happen if Roe v. Wade was struck down). These issues should not be federalized. Let the states decide.

If your state decides something you don't like, you have the option of pursuading your fellow citizens to change the legislators and change the law, or you can move somewhere else. In any event, we would all be better off if more of the laws were decided locally instead of at the federal level.