Scalia and Breyer on Teens

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

A week ago, the Supreme Court Historical Society hosted a debate between Justices Scalia and Breyer about their different interpretative theories. Neither of them expected to convince the other, of course (the BLT calls the debate 'highly stylized') but there were some interesting insights into the personalities of the two Justices. This one excerpt (from an approximate transcript provided by Josh Blackman) particularly struck me:

S: You think that both houses of Congress knew this obscure fact when passing the bill….No! This type of analysis only creates a cottage legislative history industry, in which these things are drafted and handed off to some senator to have read off, or given to some teenager to put in the report and not be voted on.

B: The President of Ford doesn’t do everything, he uses his staff as system of alert. It’s just a system of alert, like how departments make decisions. The staff works for the senator, the Senator does not need to read it all, nor should he have to, he just has a system of alert like everyone else. Even judges have clerks. They have some staff member answerable to the decision maker to bring things to their attention. I have nothing against teenagers, never saw any actually. A senator does not need to read all of everything…that would be unreasonable and inconsistent with reality. The staff is highly attuned to the senator, and I have no apologies for this point of view.

I'm somewhat dismayed that Justice Scalia so easily dismisses the work of "teenagers." If a "teenager" deals with it it must not be taken seriously in the Senate.

Justice Breyer's response, though, seems to be right on the money. "I have nothing against teenagers, never saw any actually." The question, of course, is the quality of the work and how seriously it's taken, not who does it.

Bravo, Justice Breyer. Justice Scalia, try not to use "teenager" as a general term for things you want to denigrate.