Supreme Justice - whatever.
There was a wonderful quote published today from Antonin Scalia in dealing with a Global Warming case in the Supreme Court. Scalia had just wondered whether carbon was really a problem for the stratosphere.
Milkey: "Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It's the troposphere,"
"Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist," Scalia said to laughter. "That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth."
Unfortunately, I don't think the God that authored the laws of physics cares very much whether or not Scalia is a scientist. The laws of physics apply to him even more ruthlessly than the laws of the United States.
If, as Justice Kennedy suggested, the validity of the theory of global warming is germane to the case (since if there is no global warming there is no injury or potential injury connected to the case under consideration), then shouldn’t the justices try to understand the global warming issue? What puzzles me even more than the cavalier attitude the justices show to ideas that they don’t like, (we are used to that) is that Scalia light-heartedly behaves as if no intelligent person, indeed not even a person of such sophisticated and accomplished intellectual stature as Justice Scalia himself, can be expected to understand science if he is not a “scientist.”
He can dismiss the science of the matter to laughter, and indicate he thinks it unimportant, in a way that shows his confidence that everyone else thinks it is unimportant too, and that there is no obligation even to try to understand it. But science is nothing more than finding out things we did not know before.
If scientists are finding out about things that may threaten our very existence, (or possibly not - it depends what unknown things science finds out next, - when science changes its mind, that is the sign of its strength,) then for Scalia to brush it off, or to think he has shown it to be insubstantial simply because nobody can tell him whether the catastrophe will happen at 3:25 next Tuesday afternoon or not, is just being stubborn without reason.
I am sure that Antonin Scalia is perfectly capable of understanding the difference between the Stratosphere and the Troposphere if he were to listen for a moment or two. Scientific jargon is no more impenetrable than legal jargon. An official position of Philistinism isn’t a promising technology. It doesn't help solve practical problems. Not everything we refuse to see goes away.
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Milkey: "Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It's the troposphere,"
"Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist," Scalia said to laughter. "That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth."
Unfortunately, I don't think the God that authored the laws of physics cares very much whether or not Scalia is a scientist. The laws of physics apply to him even more ruthlessly than the laws of the United States.
If, as Justice Kennedy suggested, the validity of the theory of global warming is germane to the case (since if there is no global warming there is no injury or potential injury connected to the case under consideration), then shouldn’t the justices try to understand the global warming issue? What puzzles me even more than the cavalier attitude the justices show to ideas that they don’t like, (we are used to that) is that Scalia light-heartedly behaves as if no intelligent person, indeed not even a person of such sophisticated and accomplished intellectual stature as Justice Scalia himself, can be expected to understand science if he is not a “scientist.”
He can dismiss the science of the matter to laughter, and indicate he thinks it unimportant, in a way that shows his confidence that everyone else thinks it is unimportant too, and that there is no obligation even to try to understand it. But science is nothing more than finding out things we did not know before.
If scientists are finding out about things that may threaten our very existence, (or possibly not - it depends what unknown things science finds out next, - when science changes its mind, that is the sign of its strength,) then for Scalia to brush it off, or to think he has shown it to be insubstantial simply because nobody can tell him whether the catastrophe will happen at 3:25 next Tuesday afternoon or not, is just being stubborn without reason.
I am sure that Antonin Scalia is perfectly capable of understanding the difference between the Stratosphere and the Troposphere if he were to listen for a moment or two. Scientific jargon is no more impenetrable than legal jargon. An official position of Philistinism isn’t a promising technology. It doesn't help solve practical problems. Not everything we refuse to see goes away.
My Web Home Page
My Agent
My Wife's new store
© ajm 2006
posted by Andrew Massey | Thursday, November 30, 2006
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