Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, making a rare appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” discussed the upholding of the Affordable Care Act and said Chief Justice John Roberts falsely interpreted the language of the law.
Roberts’ swing vote saved President Barack Obama’s legislation, and Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion.
“There’s no way to regard this penalty as a tax,” he told host Chris Wallace. “It simply does not bear that meaning. You cannot give, in order to save the Constitutionality, you cannot give the text a meaning it cannot bear.”
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Scalia also talked about the right to bear arms, in light of the recent shootings in Aurora, Colo., and conceded “there are some limitations that can be imposed” on that right.
“What they are will depend on what the society understood were reasonable limitations at the time,” he said, referring to a theory put forth in his book called originalism. “My starting point, and probably my ending point, will be what limitations are within the understood limitations that the society had at the time.
“They had some limitations on the nature of arms that could be barred,” Scalia said. “So, we’ll see what those limitations are as applied to modern weapons.”
He called Obama’s most recent “State of the Union” address a “political spectacle” and said the president’s frank remarks about the court’s controversial decision on corporate spending limitations were out of line.
“I wasn’t there, and it’s yet another reason why I will not be there in the future,” Scalia said.
After watching a clip of the statement Obama made in April, during which he jawboned the justices and warned overturning the law would be “unprecedented,” Scalia responded, “What can he do to me or to any of us? We have life tenure, and we have it precisely so we will not be influenced by politics, by threats from anybody.”
At 76, the longest-serving justice on the current court said he has no immediate plans to retire. When Wallace asked whether he would time his retirement to coincide with a more conservative president, Scalia answered, “I would not like to be replaced by someone who immediately sets about undoing everything I’ve tried to do for 25 years, 26 years.”
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