Justice Scalia on Justice Ginsburg

Recently, Justices Scalia and Ginsburg appeared together at the National Press Club and fielded questions posed by noted journalist Marvin Kalb. You can read excerpts here, compliments of the Wall Street Journal. Here is the most interesting excerpt (April 18):

 Marvin Kalb: Are you two ever going to agree on big issues and still maintain the friendship?

Justice Scalia: We agree on a whole lot of stuff. Ruth is really bad only on the knee-jerk stuff. (Big laughs from the audience.) She is a really good textualist. In those things, where the text is what she’s guided by, she’s terrific. She’s obviously very smart. Most cases, I think, we’re together. I think we are together in a lot of criminal defense cases, upholding the rights of the criminal defendant. Ruth and I are quite frequently in dissent from the court’s decision. So we agree on a whole lot. You have it wrong.

(ljs)