Author Says Bush Needs More Judges Like Scalia

by Chad Groening
November 11, 2004

(AgapePress) - A conservative attorney and former congressional staffer hopes his new book will shed some light on how judicial activism has negatively affected society.

In the recently published book, Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice (Regnery, 2004), author Kevin Ring explains why he is convinced that America needs more judges like Antonin Scalia.

Ring, a former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, contends that, when it comes to the Constitution of the United States, Scalia is a strict constructionist who hates to see judges legislating from the bench. The conservative author says Scalia has a problem whenever any court "not only chooses to abdicate its role as neutral arbiters of the law" but then also chooses to play a policy-making role.

"Then, when they play the policy role," Ring notes, "it's usually in a position that's adverse to the people, and that's what I think he finds particularly offensive." The former congressional staffer says the subject of his book is a judge who has a conservative judicial philosophy, and actually practices what he preaches.

The author says Scalia "doesn't always come down on the conservative political philosophy, and doesn't always come out with policy outcomes. But that's because his view is that the role of a judge is to interpret the law as it's written, not to impose his values through his position."

Also, Ring is impressed with the Supreme Court justice's stance on same-sex marriage: he says Scalia believes that hot-button issue should not be left in the hands of activist judges, but instead "would leave that issue to the people and the legislatures to decide, through the representatives reflecting the will of the people."

That will was clearly demonstrated in the recent election, the attorney says, in which 11 states put the homosexual marriage issue on the ballot, and all rejected it. "Eleven states went out," he observes, "and they all made the same decision, and they made it forcefully and unequivocally." When the people were allowed to speak on the issue, the majority very clearly said no.

But, of course, in Massachusetts, state Supreme Court judges said yes. Ring says he believes what Justice Scalia finds noxious in all this is "not only that the court would rule on that policy a different way, but that they would take that decision away from the people, enshrine gay marriage in the constitution, and not allow people to debate it and vote on it."

If and when George W. Bush has to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Ring says the president should look at someone like Antonin Scalia. The author and former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee believes Scalia is one judge who can be trusted to interpret the Constitution as it is written, and the high court bench would benefit from more of his kind.