Rating  - Easy reading and food for thought
I actually picked this up at the end of my second year of law school and I found Scalia's insight and opinions to be original and thought provoking. I feel that so much time is spent teaching law students how to analyze and interpret case law, without often directing our attention to how judges deal with the vast field of statutory interpretation. Very easy and quick read, hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Rating - Dishonest and power-crazed judges are the issue
This book was not exactly what I expected; it was better. It contains an essay by Justice Scalia about the judicial role in deciding statutory and constitutional questions. His essay is followed by comments by other individuals which, in turn, is followed by Justice Scalia's response. The most fascinating part of the entire book was the recognition by the writers that judges have taken it upon themselves to legislate and decide what government policy "ought to be" in rendering judicial decisions. Some of the writers seem to think this is acceptable and expected. To an attorney who has watched courts reach intellectually dishonest decisions in cases where there is potential economic or political impact (for example, one appellate court went so far as to render an unpublished opinion in one case -- apparently to conceal its dishonesty in letting a state divert millions of dollars from a state retirement plan -- then followed up a few months later with a published opinion by the same judges with a precisely opposite holding on an important legal question decided in the first case), the concerns expressed by Justice Scalia were more than theoretical. While our legislators may not be the sharpest knives in the drawer, at least voters can remove them from office or persuade them to change their minds. There is no such opportunity with unelected judges who not only can manipulate facts and law in their rulings, but can issue decisions that never see the light of day and thus escape public scrutiny. Both liberals and conservatives have plenty to fear from judges who believe that they are a law unto themsleves.
Rating  - What Scalia's Theory Is Not
Justice Antonin Scalia may be the most dynamic and melodramatic personality on the United States Supreme Court. His opinions burst with bombast. Oddly, Scalia has written very little about the law even though he served as a law professor before launching a career as a government attorney and judge. He has penned only a handful of law review articles. The articles are slightly more illuminating on his theory of jurisprudence, textualism, than is this thin book, "A Matter of Interpretation."
"A Matter of Interpretation" is filled up with a round table dialogue that Scalia graciously initiated to invite notable liberals to disagree with textualism.
In the brief paragraphs that Scalia allocates to himself, he sets out his principles of textualism, which is a combination of Latin parsing and historical analysis. In short, Scalia looks for a constitutional meaning in the actual words of the constitution, and if he cannot find a meaning in the set text, he embarks on an historical investigation of whether the rule or right existed in English common law at the time of the writing of the U.S. Constitution.
Scalia's textualism, therefore, is a good deal more involved than mere glancing at words written in the late 18th century. In fact, Scalia protests that he is not a "strict constructionist," not a justice who merely looks blindly at James Madison's handiwork. Scalia claims that he does not read the Constitution strictly, but rather he reads the Constitution reasonably.
This will no doubt come as a shock to a generation of law professors, law students, and attorneys, who have maintained that Scalia is a rigid strict constructionist. This revelation may also undermine Scalia's reputation as a writer of court opinions and dissents that are always consistently and impressively logical.
It may also come as a shock that Scalia, the titan of tradition, partly bases his textualist theory on the ideas of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the man who insisted that law changes with the times, or reflects "the felt necessities of the time."
The weakness in Scalia's historical origins method is that more importance is placed on English common law than revolutionary American experience. A reason perhaps that Scalia is a staunch defender of free speech, long a principle of English law, and lacks sympathy for search and seizure defendants, persons caught up in the Fourth Amendment right, a right inspired by the searching of Boston homes by British troops during the Revolutionary War.
Scalia's textualism, as set out in this book, is a good deal more flexible than many of his disciples or opponents would give him credit for. Scalia tends to apply this "historical "orgins" method most often in areas such as punitive damages, an area of law which has scarcely changed in centuries. However, in cases where the issue implicates modern rights, such as abortion, Scalia has departed from textualism completely for rationales ranging from stare decisis and reliance to a more or less nihilistic rejection of substantive due process.
Nevertheless, "A Matter of Interpretation" places Scalia in the pantheon of legal scholars, such as Holmes and Judge Richard A. Posner, who have bravely put forward their own theories of jurisprudence. And in the end, this theory, rather than his bombastic rhetoric and conservative prosyletizing, will probably be his enduring legacy.
[Hansen Alexander is an attorney in New York City. His most recent book is the comic novel, "The Death of Chauvinism."]
Rating - Keep Reading Books by Sitting Supreme Court Justices
I think that it is good to read widely and get divergent perspectives. Thus, Christians and Jews should read the Quran and Muslims should read the Torah and the New Testament. Conservatives should read the Nation or the New Republic and visit the DailyKos website and liberals should read the Weekly Standard or National Review and visit RealClearPolitics. The same perspective applies with Breyer's book. Regardless of your perspective, you should read this brief and easily understandable statement of judicial philosophy from a sitting Supreme Court justice. (And, it would also be good to read the counterpoint from Justice Breyer for the same reasons.)
I find this book to be a more interesting and powerful presentation than the recent book by Justice Breyer. In Breyer's book we read just his perspective and much of it is a response to this book by Scalia. In Scalia's book we are given Scalia's approach to judging and then we are given critical responses to that approach by several different authors, not all judges themselves. It is clear that Scalia likes the clash of argument and finds great benefit in that clash.
This book is brief and extremely well written so that even someone untrained in law can still easily follow the arguments and counterarguments. Anyone interested in our Supreme Court would find this book (and Breyer's) to be extremely useful and enlightening.
For myself, I found that reading both books left me believing that while both Justices approach the world in different ways, we are in good hands. Given the incredibly politicization of the Supreme Court, I found these books to be reassuring of the intelligence, character, and skill of these two Justices.
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