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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

> And as such, they have the right to try to get those opinions represented.

At best, Scalia represented the opinions of an opinionated and influential but not truly representative minority of the population.

Now - there's nothing in the constitution that says explicitly that the Supreme Court should be a representative body.

But the political reality is that judges aren't picked for the SC because they're the best legal minds of their generation - they're chosen for their legal minds and for their politics.

IMO, in a representative democracy, the political values of the judiciary and especially of the SC should be broadly similar to those of the population.

Did Scalia bring the SC closer to the values of the median population, or did he move it away from the median?

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This seems to make sense but it is the Supreme Court's responsibility to drag society forward when society's inertia is at odds with the Constitution. For example, 90% of people didn't support interracial marriage when the Supreme Court legalised it. If the bench's political values were the same as the general population, that would never have happened.

It was closer to 80%, and on a question of disapproval of[1], not illegality. I may disapprove of your misquoting stats, but that doesn't mean I want you to go to jail for it. Also the majority of population lived in a state where interracial marriage was legal since before 1940, and by 1967 the only states that have miscegenation laws were the ones apt to fly Dixie. It was not so much about dragging against inertia, unless by inertia you mean stalemate—the South would never have repealed those laws.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-wh...

My apologies, I misread the the Gallup graph because the one I saw didn't have 1968 marked. Anyhow, my point stands. It would not have been legalised if the bench voted like the general population did.

No, that doesn't follow at all. Loving was a criminal case. The poll is about "disapproval". Again, I disapprove of your lack of logic at this small hour, but I would never want you to go to jail over it ;-)

> This seems to make sense but it is the Supreme Court's responsibility to drag society forward when society's inertia is at odds with the Constitution.

I don't see where it says that in Article III of the Constitution. Can you point it out to me?

I didn't say the court has a need or obligation to representative. I said that there are real people who believe the same things Scalia did.

Those people, minority or not, have as much of a right to try to elect people who are like them and and gain support for what they think is right as you do.

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