Scalia: ‘I Didn’t Bring it Into the Courts. Mr. Gore Brought it Into the Courts.’

[WSJ_law_blog]

The term may be over, but Justice Scalia’s media tour rumbles on. Last week, in an interview with the Telegraph, Justice Scalia, asked yet again about the 2000 election fiasco, explained:

• Richard Nixon, when he lost to [John F.] Kennedy [in 1960] thought that the election had been stolen in Chicago, which was very likely true with the system at the time. But he did not even think about bringing a court challenge. That was his prerogative. So you know if you don’t like it, don’t blame it on me. I didn’t bring it into the courts. Mr. Gore brought it into the courts. So if you don’t like the courts getting involved talk to Mr. Gore.

Scalia told the Telegraph that that he regretted that the Supreme Court had become involved. “But I don’t know how we could have avoided it. . . So I have no regrets about taking the case and I think our decision in the case was absolutely right. But if you ask me ‘Am I sorry it all happened?’ Of course I am sorry it happened. There was no way that we were going to come out of it smelling like a rose.”

Scalia also reiterated his feeling, expressed in other interviews, that too many of the best minds in the U.S. are wasting away in law. “I think that any system that requires that many of the country’s best minds, and they are the best minds, is too complex,” he said. “If you look at the figures, where does the top of the class in college go to? It goes into law. They don’t go into teaching. Now I love the law, there is nothing I would rather do. But it doesn’t produce anything.”