WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Monday took to the Senate floor to remember the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away one month ago after a decades-long tenure on the High Court that Sessions said left him regarded as “one of the greatest Justices ever to site on the Supreme Court.”
“Justice Scalia’s greatness was founded on the power of his ideas and the defense of the founding principles of America at the highest intellectual level,” Sessions said. “He moved the legal world. Justice Scalia relentlessly… drove the message that many of the ideas that are out there today are inconsistent with the rule of law and the American tradition.”
Sessions noted on that Scalia’s approach was at odds with most jurists when he was first appointed to the High Court by President Ronald Reagan.
“The Constitution, they say, is a ‘living’ document,” Sessions explained. “How ridiculous is that? The judges said that because it gave them the power to update it and advance it and make it say what they would wish it to say.”
Scalia was known for his “textualist” reading of the Constitution, which adheres strictly to the meaning of the actual text, rather than taking into account legislative history or other external variables.
“It’s not a living document,” Scalia remarked in 2013. “It’s dead, dead, dead.”
(Video below: Sessions discusses Scalia on the Senate floor)
https://youtu.be/hekLt6lEx-M
Sessions noted how Justice Scalia’s philosophy changed the legal world. He recalled his time as a law student at the University of Alabama when the idea of Judicial Activism dominated the mainstream.
“This has been a long, tough, intellectual battle,” he said, declaring his support to Scalia’s theory that the Constitution is a contract that grants the federal government limited powers.
Sessions also praised Scalia for his commitment to religious freedom.
(Video below: Sessions discusses Scalia’s stance on religious liberty)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql_6irUsddk
To Sessions, Scalia was instrumental for protecting the expression of faith in the public realm.
“I think we’ve forgotten the free exercise clause and I think we’ve misinterpreted the establishment of religion clause,” he said.
The court will be hearing a religious freedom challenge to ObamaCare this term, where a group of nuns has challenged the contraception mandate of ObamaCare on First Amendment grounds.
Given the current makeup of the court, the result in these religious freedom cases is up in the air.
