Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used a Friday speech to question judges for making morality-laced decisions.
The Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times reports that Scalia's North Carolina Bar Association address was called "Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters." He expressed his view that society has grown to place moralism ahead of expertise.
"In the United States, and indeed throughout the world, belief in the expert has been replaced by the judge moralist," Scalia said. "We have become addicted to abstract moralizing. I am questioning the sanity of having value-laden judgments made by judges."
Scalia's Friday concerns paralleled his January frustrations about the Constitution being classified as a living document. He advocates for laws of the land as the strongest guides to how to interpret changing circumstances.
“It’s not a living document," he said at a Southern Methodist University appearance, according to the Dallas Morning News. "It’s dead, dead, dead."
Scalia has served on the Supreme Court since September 1986, making him the longest-serving current member. His talk comes in the midst of possible Supreme Court decisions on voting rights, affirmative action and gay marriage in the coming days. Recess typically begins at the end of June, but the court can choose to add more dates.
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