"Get Over It." -Justice Antonin Scalia

If you had the opportunity to learn from one of the nine most influential people in your profession -- in the country, for that matter -- what would be on your mind? Would you pick his brain about his area of expertise? Would you ask him how he got to his current position and what you could do to better yourself? Or would you insult him and rant at him about something he did eight years ago, which can never change and the effects of which are about the expire?

Apparently for some people who are supposedly very smart, the lattermost is the most legitimate answer.

So what got Thom all pissed off this time, you ask?

Friday morning, every 1L at UVA Law got to take a Constitutional Law class with Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court. Let me repeat that is case it didn't sink in: we got to learn a Con Law topic from one of the guys who decides what Con Law IS. It wasn't just an opinion lecture or something of that sort, either: we had homework for it, and the lesson (on standing and judicial restraint) was on a topic you would normally learn in a Con Law course.

At the end of the lecture, we had a chance to ask questions. Once again, I cannot stress this enough: there was a Supreme Court Justice standing twenty feet away, and we had a chance to partake of his knowledge.

So I raised my hand, hoping to get to ask about the fundamental difference between secondary sources in Constitutional interpretation and statutory interpretation and why Justice Scalia's philosophy on the two is so disparate (NERD ALERT). Yet I had to watch in amazement as instead, every goddamned hippie idiot in my class addressed one of the nine most respected judges in the entire f***ing world like he was some worthless schoolboy -- or worse, a politician.

"While I admire your constantly overstepping your bounds as a judge..."

"Didn't you once say you were like Clarence Thomas except not an idiot?" (apparently he didn't)

"Why should we care what the Founders said about..."

And then there was one moron who actually had a question written out so he didn't forget to use all the fancy big words that he couldn't remember himself, probably for lack of knowing their definition. Luckily Scalia cut him off before he could bore us all to tears. ("Are you reading that? Come on. 'Primeva?' 'Chimera?'")

But the absolute most amazing one was the guy who stood up and challenged the decision in Bush v. Gore.

You read that right. At one of the ten best law schools in America, some idiot is still so pissed off about an election that happened while he was in high school that he attacked a Supreme Court Justice on it now. In person. During a class. While blatantly misquoting the decision, I might add.

I was frankly embarrassed. It was clear that this moron hadn't even listened to the lecture, let alone formed a cohesive thought or opinion on the topic at hand. It was even more clear that not only was he asking an irrelevant question, but he wasn't even asking it for scholarly or legal reasons: he was exhibiting nothing but the most useless partisan hackery. He was wasting an golden learning opportunity in the name of pointless whining.

I use no hyperbole when I say that I didn't think people that blindly stupid went on to do anything with their lives. And I pull no punches when I say that I am saddened that I will potentially have to work around people so obsessed with their own viewpoints and politics that they can't even approach learning without constant self-reference.

Of course, I could just be pissed off because now I'll never know why Scalia thinks The Federalist is a more legitimate source of legislative/Constitutional intent than Senate and House Committee Reports. Such is the refuge of the statutory interpretation nerd.

Have a nice day.