the feminist librarian reads

LITHWICK
I think this is a very, very complicated conversation, Diane, because I think we have to separate the fact that if you were gay in America, if you were a woman in America, if you are poor, if you are a death penalty – a death row inmate who is hoping that someone is going to have some compassion for you, this is not a day where you want to hear, you know, Justice Scalia was a towering giant because there are a lot of people who would say, and I’ve been covering him for 15 years, and have said, this is a man who didn’t find a space in his heart for everybody.

This is a man who sometimes used doctrine to obfuscate what was, in some ways, the fundamental foundational role of justice in this country, which is to make things fair and make things right. And so it’s a tricky conversation because on the one hand, as a craftsman, I couldn’t agree more with Jeff and with Stuart. He changed the terms of the game. He made textualism and originalism and a rigorous way of thinking about the Constitution something that everybody does now on the right and the left.

The 2008 Heller decision, the guns decision, the liberals used Scalia’s toolkit, used originalism and textualism. Everybody agrees he changed the way we talk about doctrine. But I think we also have to say in this country, it is fair to say that women are impoverished by the Scalia doctrine. Women, minorities, death row inmates, workers in this country did not find a hero in Justice Antonin Scalia.