Justice Thomas on Antonin Scalia
He spoke to us about Winston Churchill in San Francisco in 2009. Ever since, I have sought out the uncommon speeches of Justice Clarence Thomas. Invariably I find them moving, eloquent, and instructive on things I haven’t considered sufficiently.
Such was his November 2016 tribute to Antonin Scalia, given to the Federalist Society. He began with examples of the late Justice’s wit (beloved alike by Justice Thomas and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Respectively, they agreed with Scalia most of the time—and little of the time.):
In PGA Tour vs. Martin [Scalia] wrote: “I am sure that the framers of the U.S. Constitution aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland, prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this August Court would some day have to wrestle with the age-old jurisprudential question for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer?”…
