The Man Who Would Be Chief Justice

Everyone expects George W. Bush to appoint Antonin Scalia as Chief Justice when the current Chief, William Renquist, finally shuffles off the bench and gives up his chevron-emblazoned pontifical robes, so it's only wise to consider the judicial temperament of the Man Who Would Judge Us.

You saw the decision announced yesterday that ruled unconstitutional the execution of persons who were legally children when they committed their crimes? Justice Scalia, with Justice Thomas in lockstep, voted in the minority on that case, voted to allow the execution of children, specifically in Texas, Oklahoma, and Virginia. According to Think Progress, "The practice has been disavowed, since 1990, in human rights bastions such as Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, Congo and China." It's saying something that our next Chief Justice might be considered a trifle harsh in Saudi Arabia, which still practices stoning to death for adulterous women.

In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, Scalia and Thomas supported executing the mentally retarded, dissenting from the Court's 6-3 ruling that executing mentally retarded convicts constituted "cruel and unusual punishment."

Also in 2002, in Hope v. Pelzer, Scalia and Thomas dissented from a 6-3 decision to ban the Alabama practice of chaining prisoners to outdoor "hitching posts" and abandoning them for hours without food, water, or a chance to use the bathroom.

In 1992, Scalia and Thomas dissented in Hudson v. McMillan, a case in which a Louisiana inmate "was shackled and then punched and kicked by two prison guards while a supervisor looked on." The beating left the inmate "with a swollen face, loosened teeth and a cracked dental plate." The Court ruled the inmate's treatment violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, but Scalia and Thomas argued the inmate had suffered "insignificant" harm.

Alberto Gonzales, when he, too, gets the Bush appointment to the High Court, is going to fit right in with these guys.