Late Reagan-Appointed Justice Antonin Scalia Once Regarded Diversity As A Superficial Issue
Late Justice Antonin Scalia who was appointed by Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the U.S. Sente in 1986 once regarded diversity as a superfical issue that is not relevant to building advanced civilization.
CS Monitor wrote in 2016 after late Justice Scalia’s death, “Scalia’s unusual view of Supreme Court diversity,’ By many measures, the current Supreme Court is the most diverse in history. But Justice Antonin Scalia didn’t see it that way.”
“Justice Antonin Scalia, who lamented the court’s homogeneity with respect to a number of key characteristics, including life experience and work experience, in one of the last dissents he wrote,” the outlet continued.
In 2006, Late Justice Scalia appeared on ‘This Is America with Dennis Wholey’ to discuss and define what it means to be an American.
“Diversity alone is is is not what makes a great nation, I mean, diversity alone makes some of the tribal societies of the world that they never quite make it, such as some of the places in the Middle East where we’re trying to establish nationhood. As I said earlier, it’s part of our tradition that everybody can be an American. But there has been a common culture. You don’t have to belong to it. But there has been that,” the Late Justice Scalia once said.
Dennis Wholey asked the late justice if there is a common culture and wanting to know what it is that everybody can be an American.
“Let me tell you a story. My junior year of college, I studied in Switzerland and I used to get really annoyed when the French Swiss professors I had would refer constantly to ‘Le Pe Anglo-Sax’ the Anglo-Saxon countries, meaning England, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada. I said, you know, Scalia, and I’m as American as anybody. Look at this face. Is this an Anglo-Saxon face? I had never been in England, but at the end of my year, I went to England and I felt at home,” Late Justice Scalie shared.”
“There is there is no doubt that American culture, American common culture, which nobody has to belong to, originates with English culture and that includes Shakespeare. It includes nursery rhymes that we all know and that we use as examples. That’s our common culture. And I think the framers recognized that. And diversity is fine. But diversity does not make a nation,” Late Justice Scalia continued.
The late Reagan-appointed Justice Antonin Scalia was known to be a fierce supporter of separation of powers and protecting it.
“Very few countries in the world have a separately elected chief executive. Sometimes I go to Europe to talk about separation of powers, and when I get there, I find that all I’m talking about is independence of the judiciary, because the Europeans don’t even try to divide the two political powers, the two political branches, the legislature and the chief executive. In all of the parliamentary countries. The chief executive is the creature of the legislature. There’s never any disagreement between them and the and the prime minister, as there is sometimes between you and the president. When there’s a disagreement, they just kick them out. They have a no confidence vote, a new election, and they get a prime minister who agrees with the legislature,” the late Justice Scalia once said.
Full video below This Is America : On Being American, Part I From 2006
