He's right that he would have a hard time getting confirmed today, and rightly so. Scalia does not represent the mainstream even of conservative jurists.

Calling his detractors people who want to "rewrite the Constitution" is legalistic misdirection -- a red herring. Rather, Scalia and those very few who subscribe to his views refuse to accept that the drafters of the Constitution intended it to be interpreted, as Madison himself said. Further, Scalia offers no rationale as to why original intent should have primacy when that original intent held forth a world view that included slavery, no voting rights for women and no obligation of equal protection of the law imposed upon the states.

Scalia's views sound very straight forward because of their simplicity, but are simplistic in the extreme. The founding fathers, in contrast, knew that the world is not so simple.

In Justice Scalia's world, the Supreme Court could be replaced by a giant computer -- you feed it the law and feed it the facts and it spits out an answer.

The truth is that the law has never been black and white and never will be, much to the chagrin of jurists as Scalia.

Typical "Big Government" comment Barry.

Judge Scalia is on target. Originalism is all that makes sense or else every court is a Constitution onto themselves. The founders understood this obvious fact and there are mechanism for modifying the Constitutions as society evolves. Judges shouldn't be changing the original meaning of the Constitution. If we want a different Constitution we have the ability to make the needed changes. This power should not be in the hands of a few judges.

Without adherence to the Constitution, there's no point to having a Constitution.

The Constitution governs the government. Presidents are required to obey the Constitution. Congress is required to obey to the Constitution. And the principle of balanced powers requires that the judiciary obey the Constitution.

The founders intentionally created a structure that could not be changed without widespread public approval. Amendments to the Constitution require approval by the various states... in other words, "the consent of the governed." The judiciary should have the same power to change the Constitution as the Executive and Legislative branches have, which is to say, none. Nowhere in the founding documents is it suggested that any branch of the federal government should have the power to reconstitute itself.

It's facile to toss off the observation that all words are open to interpretation. While this is true, it's simply an inherent limitation of language. It is not justification for politicians, policemen, or judges to substitute their own interpretation of the Constitution for that of its authors. While the meaning of words is never absolute, the meaning is rarely so vague that the intent of the authors cannot be easily determined by an honest, competent judge.

Sure, Madison and the framer's knew that the document would need to be interpreted. But they emphatically did not expect that justices would manifestly change the constitution by using clever, incoherent, and illogical interpretive methods.

You cannot go after Scalia's originalism on the grounds that his interpretive theory would not produce the results you happen to like precisely because Scalia's theory holds that what one happens to want has no place in interpreting a legal document. The Justices are there to say what the law says, not what it ought to say. If the constitution provides for slavery, the Justices must not--however much they may personally dislike slaver--lie to the American People by saying that it does. What the law ought to be is a question best addressed by legislatures, and that is who is given the authority to address these questions by the constitution.

The pendulum swing away from original intent was forcefully moved by the Civil war reconstruction. Way back when the Republicans were progressive, against slavery, pro suffrage, and pro liberal currency. The two dominant parties appear as blurred versions of what each other once were.
We can never go back! If the conservative Republican domination of the court is maintained the battles will have very limited effect.
The greater problem is that the gate keepers at the first doors of justice have agendas which favor partisan leanings. The political center is suppressed. Corporate power and the financial special interests are mugging the middle class.