The Good Old Days Analysis

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Pages: 2

In “The Good Old Days” (2010), while agreeing that Atonin Scalia, a “most influential member” of the Supreme Court, “turned the high court” from “liberal… [to] conservative” in “terms of debate”, Alfred S. Regnery argues that this couldn’t occur without William Rehnquist laying the “groundwork”: In fact, when he shifted federal power in the Supreme court, Rehnquist promoted progressive legislation, thereby increasing small-governments and leading to conservative votes on issues such as gun control and abortion. The author looks to Rehnquist’s friend who describes that judge (who thinks like an “old right… Republic[an]”) believes in “majority rule, …consensus, and ‘pluralism’” , then moves to illustrate stubborn Atonin and accommodating Rehnquist's different personalities, and finally describes Rehnquist “finding new rights…, …show more content…
Posner (believing that “textualism is wrong”) proves that Justice Antonin Scalia, a supposed advocate of remaining passive when ruling by taking the “original” meaning of every law in the context that legislators created it in order to stay objective, and lexicographer Bryan Garner’s new book that “aggressively defends” “textual literalism” is absolute nonsense. To display this, Posner first identifies three instances throughout their book where the authors assert their view then back it with contradicting examples, then, providing six more examples, the author reveals that Scalia and Garner constantly “omit contrary evidence”. Thus, Posner uncovers that, despite attempting to hide it by only referencing examples with “outcomes that favor [their] views”, the men “lack commitment to… originalism” and “the purist form [of textualism]” in order to warn those who read their book that the authors “distort …. how judges actually interpret text”. Given the overly supported examples of each claim, Posner seems to target an pro-originalism audience who naïvely endorse Justice Scalia’s