Brian Zick
Life has come, indisputably, to imitate a story by Franz Kafka. It is Rorschach who has now been officially judged the perpetrator of offense, and who is to be penalized accordingly, when folks see disagreeable things in amorphous blots of ink. The Supreme Court says so.
It's difficult to say which is worse, with respect to the Supreme Court decision in NEA v Finley - the majority opinion (authored by Justice O'Connor and joined by Justices Rehnquist, Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer), or the concurring opinion (by Justice Scalia joined by Justice Thomas). There certainly can't be anything good with the Supreme Court saying no First Amendment violation occurs when the government authority dictates conditions for speech. And this is precisely what the Court has done.
In the two opinions combined, the 8 justices upheld the law that makes "artistic excellence and artistic merit" matters dependent upon consideration of "general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public." History has before been witness to "excellence" and "merit" in the arts being factors measured - as a matter of law - on the basis of sycophancy to narcissist jingo sentiment.
William Shirer, in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, quotes a proclamation made on May 10, 1933, some four and a half months after Hitler became Chancellor, when at about midnight torches were put to a huge pile of books - some twenty thousand of them. Any book was burned "which acts subversively on our future or strikes at the root of German thought, the German home and the driving forces of our people." The idea that the United States federal government has the power to officially judge what constitutes "decency" and "respect for American values," and may therefore justifiably discriminate against speech which the government disfavors, has a rather distinctly similar foul odor. Shirer further reported that, "The new Nazi era of German culture was illuminated not only by the bonfires of books ..., but by the regimentation of culture..." And so, here and now in the United States, the Supreme Court has made official the principle in law of Happy Face-ism über alles.
The Reich Chamber of Culture, established by law in September of 1933 "to pursue a policy of German culture," was vested with the specific authority to establish government standards of artistic taste. Artists who failed to rigidly adhere to the German government's favored aesthetic predilections were forbidden from gaining public-subsidized exhibition of their work. Here and now, as a result of the Supreme Court decision, while the specific regulatory standards set are, to be sure, not by any means as rigorously restrictive, the basic legal principle in the abstract - that a government seal of approval is a proper condition for speech - is quite literally identical.
In denying any violation of First Amendment protection, the O'Connor six simply prevaricate, willfully ignoring the clear text of the law at issue and the history of First Amendment precedent, so as to support restrictions on speech without honestly admitting that's exactly what they do. Scalia and Thomas, however on the other hand, forcefully endorse a legal philosophy which states that freedom of speech in public-funded venues should be reserved exclusively for the speech with which the government agrees.
Essentially, the O'Connor majority says that, because the rules still allow for "consideration" of any aesthetic submission, that because no narrowly specific restriction exists to prevent anyone from applying for a grant, no discrimination occurs. That some expression will never actually win grant approval, because it doesn't goose-step in conformity with the limits of the government's favored aesthetic tastes, is simply irrelevant to O'Connor. The fact that any and all unpopular viewpoint expression needs cross a higher threshold for grant approval, and only speech selectively favored by the government authority may ever actually enjoy the prospect of gaining subsidy, remains to her entirely beside the point. Further, she actually makes the amazing claim that since Republicans and Democrats agreed on the legislation, in the first place, that as a result no viewpoints would be perforce left wanting in any event, as if there exists no realm of expression beyond the limits of the two major party perspectives.
In the alternative, Scalia actually endorses the goose-step principle, in his distinctly pompous and sarcastic broadside. He proclaims quite straightforwardly that it is entirely proper for the government to prohibit speech with which it disagrees, that public-funded forums may legitimately squelch expression inconsistent with the visions preferred by the government authority, that speech facilitated by public-funding should be reserved exclusively for the speech with which the government finds favor. Scalia - who quite stridently disagrees with O'Connor's reasoning but concurs with her conclusion - bases his argument on the notion that government funding of a forum serves as justification for restriction. In the doing he quite literally reduces the concept of "free" speech to mean nothing more than "no financial cost involved," that only those who lick the government's boots may enjoy officially sanctioned freedom from the monetary expense of their enterprise, while anybody who wants to express an idea lacking government favor may only do so if they pay for the privilege out of their own pocket. (For the sake of the public school and library systems one clings to the hope Scalia and Thomas will never find other Court takers for their argument.)
Either way they each arrived, the politically-motivated "outrage" mounted against a few allegedly "controversial" artists - who were judged not for what they did but for how some people chose to perceive it - has been firmly endorsed by the Court. And no mere language in the First Amendment has posed the least obstacle to the resulting suppression of speech. (By the way, so much for the illusion that Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are "liberal.")
The best - and most apt - skewering of the majority's flagrant disregard for a long history of First Amendment doctrine is manifest in the solitary dissent by Justice David Souter. Leaving, for the most part, the ideological conclusions to be drawn from the Scalia/Thomas concurrence as self-evidently ludicrous and abhorrent, Souter addresses the O'Connor opinion. He speaks with clarity and to the point, and if there is any fault with his opinion it is only that he displays way too much politeness in the face of reasoning which insults the intelligence quotient inherent to teeny chunks of dog vomit.
In his summation Souter underscores the patently Orwellian character of the O'Connor opinion, by way of confronting the majority with its overt self-contradictory paradox. Just as Orwell's Big Brother declared that WAR IS PEACE, and FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, Justice Souter refers to the NEA's official mission and notes that the majority "preserves the irony of a statutory mandate to deny recognition to virtually any expression capable of causing offense in any quarter as the most recent manifestation of a scheme enacted to 'create and sustain . . . a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry.'" Or, as Big Brother might have said, CENSORSHIP IS FREE SPEECH.
Understand, Souter makes no particular philosophical argument in his dissent. He does not even really articulate a legalistic disagreement. He cites legal precedent, but his point is rather more to present elementary lessons in history and the English language. He simply takes each Orwellian assertion made by the majority, and exposes its blatant linguistic fraud. The Court majority has said, in essence, that "restriction" doesn't really mean "restriction." The torture of language is stunning in its perversity. And Souter punctures the grotesque disingenuity forthrightly.
Most staggering is the monumental void in imagination that is revealed by the two majority opinions. O'Connor says, for example, "one could hardly anticipate how 'decency' or 'respect' would bear on grant applications in categories such as funding for symphony orchestras." The Court is obviously unfamiliar with the full range of noises that can be made by musical instruments, and the magnificence of Spike Jones' musical irreverence. Plainly ignorant of history, the Court remains unacquainted with the fact that the debut of Stravinsky's classic masterpiece Rite of Spring was condemned precisely for reasons of "indecency" and failed "respect" for convention. And O'Connor surely must have lived under a rock in the late 60s, when Jimi Hendrix, albeit not with a symphony, was quite specifically accused of producing an "indecent" and "disrespectful" rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. The fact that Jimi's tune has since become enshrined as a true masterpiece of sacred patriotic endeavor, an anthem for a time as well as a place, is all the more reason to question legal restraints based on some ill-defined narrow-minded politically motivated concern for "decency."
Particularly notable in the text of the majority opinions, it has completely escaped the grasp of all eight justices that NEA exhibition is not narrowly about providing selected artists a venue to show off their work, but it is about providing the broad opportunity to members of the public for viewing - and individually judging for themselves on a case-by-case basis - the diversity of aesthetic viewpoints which exist in our nation.
Neither O'Connor nor Scalia ever once consider that free expression encompasses access to speech by others as well as affording an individual's ability to speak. Operating on the premise of Big Nanny, their feeble minds have totally failed to consider the ramifications of preventing public exposure to a truly diverse range of ideas, so as the citizenry might be able to actually make judgments for itself about "decency" and "respect." Instead of allowing individual citizens to make up their own minds, the Court prefers to let the government authority do the peoples' thinking for them in advance.
O'Connor tries to conflate the process of judging artistic merit, in a competitive environment, with the imposition of speech restriction, by arguing that "absolute neutrality" in the selection of grantees is simply "inconceivable." Asserting the small truth that it would be "impossible to have a highly selective grant program without denying money to a large amount of constitutionally protected expression," she promotes a corollary big lie of omission, by rather conveniently ignoring that all those applicants thereby denied heretofore at least knew their rejection was not based on some insufficiency of fawning obsequiousness. The fact that not every script submitted in Hollywood may get produced is rather profoundly different from a refusal of scripts which were Blacklisted because they failed to meet the political tests dictated by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Additionally, O'Connor conflates methodology for empirical measurement with evaluations of aesthetic creativity. Says she, "if this statute is unconstitutionally vague, then so too are all government programs awarding scholarships and grants on the basis of subjective criteria such as "excellence," and she then cites examples such as authorizing the Secretary of Energy to recognize teachers for "excellence in mathematics or science education," as if measuring the ability to add 2+2 is the same subjective exercise as deciding whether to fund a show featuring Vincent Van Gogh or Norman Rockwell.
Souter, in his exceedingly restrained way, slams the majority, and exposes its bald disingenuity. In cite after cite he lays out a lengthy series of guiding precedents, points out each instance wherein the majority has totally ignored the relevant point, and injects the needed lessons in remedial reading of the English language. Says Souter, "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. (Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 ,1989). Above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message [or] its ideas, (Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 95, 1972), which is to say that 'the principle of viewpoint neutrality . . . underlies the First Amendment,' (Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U. S. 485, 505, 1984). Because this principle applies not only to affirmative suppression of speech, but also to disqualification for government favors, Congress is generally not permitted to pivot discrimination against otherwise protected speech on the offensiveness or unacceptability of the views it expresses." He further cites "Lamb' s Chapel, 508 U. S., at 394 when the government subsidizes private speech, it may not 'favor some viewpoints or ideas at the expense of others'" and "Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc., 327 U. S. 146, 149, 1946, the Postmaster General may not deny subsidies to certain periodicals on the ground that they are 'morally improper and not for the public welfare and the public good.'"
Souter notes that "One need do nothing more than read the text of the statute to conclude that Congress' s purpose in imposing the decency and respect criteria was to prevent the funding of art that conveys an offensive message; the decency and respect provision on its face is quintessentially viewpoint based, and quotations from the Congressional Record merely confirm the obvious legislative purpose. In the words of a cosponsor of the bill that enacted the proviso, 'works which deeply offend the sensibilities of significant portions of the public ought not to be supported with public funds.'"
"Just as self-evidently, a statute disfavoring speech that fails to respect America' s 'diverse beliefs and values' is the very model of viewpoint discrimination; it penalizes any view disrespectful to any belief or value espoused by someone in the American populace. Boiled down to its practical essence, the limitation obviously means that art that disrespects the ideology, opinions, or convictions of a significant segment of the American public is to be disfavored, whereas art that reinforces those values is not. After all, the whole point of the proviso was to make sure that works like Serrano' s ostensibly blasphemous portrayal of Jesus would not be funded, while a reverent treatment, conventionally respectful of Christian sensibilities, would not run afoul of the law. Nothing could be more viewpoint based than that."
Souter patiently observes, "Congress has no obligation to support artistic enterprises that many people detest. The First Amendment speaks up only when Congress decides to participate in the Nation' s artistic life by legal regulation, as it does through a subsidy scheme like the NEA. If Congress does choose to spend public funds in this manner, it may not discriminate by viewpoint in deciding who gets the money."
In Souter's most elegant and telling exposure of the majority's malignant fraud he asks, "What if the statute required a panel to apply criteria 'taking into consideration the centrality of Christianity to the American cultural experience,' or 'taking into consideration whether the artist is a communist,' or 'taking into consideration the political message conveyed by the art,' or even 'taking into consideration the superiority of the white race'? Would the Court hold these considerations facially constitutional, merely because the statute had no requirement to give them any particular, much less controlling, weight?"
The Hornbook Series, produced by West Publishing, serves as the basic student text in this nation's law schools. It does not engage in philosophical polemic, it simply educates by references made to, and analysis of, specific case law. At least as recently as the January 1990 edition (and perhaps in later volumes) of Constitutional Law, by Nowak, Rotunda and Young, in the section devoted to explaining the history of freedom of speech, the authors present a subsection entitled Subsidization and Unconstitutional Conditions. Therein they say, "It would be permissible for the federal government to condition a grant to a farmer on a requirement that the farmer not plant more than a specific acreage of a commodity because, under its commerce power, Congress could directly limit agricultural production. However, if the federal government were to condition an agricultural grant on a farmer's promise not to criticize government farm policy, the condition should be viewed as a penalty on a form of speech protected by the First Amendment."
Notwithstanding, both O'Connor and Scalia explicitly claim, by referring to the case of Rust v Sullivan - which prevented workers in government funded health clinics from speaking the word "abortion" - that "The Government can, without violating the Constitution, selectively fund a program to encourage certain activities it believes to be in the public interest, without at the same time funding an alternative program" (as if the content of speech was, in fact, not really expression of an idea after all but the non-expressive activity of government policy operations). In this case, Scalia emphatically states, "Instead of banning the funding of such productions absolutely, which I think would have been entirely constitutional, Congress took the lesser step of requiring them to be disfavored in the evaluation of grant applications."
To be sure, Scalia fairly revels in the statutory discrimination. He states, "If viewpoint discrimination in this context is unconstitutional..., the law is invalid unless there are some situations in which the decency and respect factors do not constitute viewpoint discrimination. And there is none. The applicant who displays "decency," that is, "[c]onformity to prevailing standards of propriety or modesty," American Heritage Dictionary 483 (3d ed. 1992) (def. 2), and the applicant who displays "respect," that is, "deferential regard," for the diverse beliefs and values of the American people, id., at 1536 (def. 1), will always have an edge over an applicant who displays the opposite." Scalia says, "It is evident in the legislative history that (the law) was prompted by, and directed at, the public funding of such offensive productions as Serrano's "Piss Christ," the portrayal of a crucifix immersed in urine, and Mapplethorpe' s show of lurid homoerotic photographs. Thus, even if one strays beyond the plain text it is perfectly clear that the statute was meant to disfavor - that is, to discriminate against - such productions. Not to ban their funding absolutely, to be sure (though as I shall discuss, that also would not have been unconstitutional); but to make their funding more difficult." Scalia plainly believes it is just peachy that the "law unquestionably disfavors - discriminates against - indecency and disrespect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American people."
Under a subchapter headed "Government Speech and Propaganda," Nowak, Rotunda and Young examine the 1984 case in Federal Communications Commission v League of Women Voters. This case, decided 5 to 4, invalidated a section of the Public Broadcasting Act which prohibited stations receiving grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from engaging in editorializing. The Court split occurred because the minority claimed prohibition of "editorializing" would spare the public from editorials unduly favorable to the government, while the majority believed such a ban would prevent stations from bringing matters of concern to the public's attention. Despite their differences - notes this primary instruction text for the study of constitutional law - "All nine justices, however, recognized that the government was not free to subsidize speech that favored governmental policy on publicly owned stations while refusing to fund speech adverse to governmental interests." Nevermind any arcane study of complex legal theories, it appears as if Scalia and Thomas are somehow completely unfamiliar with even the basic student texts, for they say exactly the direct opposite. Clearly, a farmer's agricultural subsidy may, according to Scalia and Thomas, be held in ransom for the pledge of fealty to the government's preferred way of thinking.
It cannot pass without notice that the German Civil Service Act of January 26, 1937, required that teachers in the Third Reich be "executors of the will of the party-supported State." Scalia and Thomas espouse their belief that the National Endowment for the Arts is appropriately an art-police organization, with the authority to enforce conformity with the government's favored aesthetic fancy.
Among other things, the respondents in the case identified as problematic the "vagueness" of meaning attending "decency" and "American values," the concern being that vagueness - according to precedent - has been recognized as producing an abridgment of lawful speech. The reasons for striking down laws for vagueness apply whenever the lack of notice in a law might deter the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right, including rights that are not protected by the First Amendment.
Scalia says vagueness - such as it may exist - is irrelevant, that "the conclusion of viewpoint discrimination is not affected by the fact that what constitutes "decency" or "the diverse beliefs and values of the American people" is difficult to pin down, any more than a civil-service preference in favor of those who display "Republican-party values" would be rendered nondiscriminatory by the fact that there is plenty of room for argument as to what Republican-party values might be." Because he believes the statute plainly discriminates, and that the discrimination is actually laudable, any claim that vagueness serves restriction is for him not a problem.
O'Connor, though, notwithstanding the void-for-vagueness doctrine, declares that in this instance it is precisely vagueness which justifies the law. She says that since Congress declined to disallow any particular viewpoints, the void in particularity thus makes the "decency and respect" criteria constitutionally acceptable, because it is not a means to silence speakers by an express threat to censor ideas. (One contemporary euphemism for this sort of linguistic sham is "weasel words.")
Finally, one gets the full flavor of Scalia's attitude towards art which remains beyond his personal intellectual grasp, with his scornful, dare one say "disrespectful" aside. "I cannot refrain from observing" says he "that if the vagueness doctrine were applicable, the agency charged with making grants under a statutory standard of "artistic excellence" - and which has itself thought that standard met by everything from the playing of Beethoven to a depiction of a crucifix immersed in urine - would be of more dubious constitutional validity than the "decency" and "respect" limitations that respondents (who demand to be judged on the same strict standard of "artistic excellence") have the humorlessness to call too vague." Scalia's pathetic need to spew ridicule, in the context of his formal legal opinion, reveals a deeper pathology.
In a speech delivered on July 18, 1937, dedicating the "House of German Art," Adolf Hitler felt the need to heap scorn upon the so-called "degenerate artists." Declared der Fuehrer, "Works of art that cannot be understood but need a swollen set of instructions to prove their right to exist and find their way to neurotics who are receptive to such stupid or insolent nonsense will no longer openly reach the German nation. Let no one have illusions! National Socialism has set out to purge the German Reich and our people of all those influences threatening its existence and character." In full rant he proclaimed, "Let no one say these artists depict what they see. Among the paintings submitted for this exhibition, there were many works that would actually lead us to believe that there are people who see things differently than they are, that there really are men who see the present-day figures of our people only as degenerate cretins - men who are determined to perceive, or, as they would say, to experience, meadows as blue, skies as green, and clouds as sulphur yellow. I do not intend to debate whether these individuals do in fact see and perceive in this way. But in the name of the German people, I mean to forbid these pitiful unfortunates, who obviously suffer from some eye disease, from attempting to force the results of their defective vision onto their fellow human beings as reality, or, indeed, from serving it up as 'art.'"
Hitler declared that, in art as in politics, he was prepared "to rid the German Reich of those influences which are fatal and ruinous to its existence." He promised to "wage an unrelenting war of purification against the last elements of putrefaction in our culture." Scalia's words evince a distinctly similar void in expansive creative vision.
Otto Dix, a so-called "degenerate artist" - and, not just
incidentally, one of the foremost artists of all time - had his work vilified
and condemned by the Nazis as "indecent" and "obscene."
And his work was banned from exhibition in public-funded museums, disparaged
as "a waste of tax-payer money." It would not be unfair to describe
much of his artwork as "offensive," to be sure, precisely because
it was his intent to communicate the horror of the "indecent"
and "obscene" social conditions he observed. One piece in particular,
a 1922 etching entitled Lustmord (Sex murder), depicts a naked bloody mutilated
corpse, legs splayed so that the victim's genitals are literally at the
center of the image, while next to the body two dogs fornicate. Not exactly
the sort of pastoral scenery one might tend to hang over the living room
couch.
Given an honest and accurate description of Dix's piece - blatant debauched sex, exposed genitals, extreme gore, active fucking, and surely no "decency" or "respect" for the nation's "values" - it is rather easy to conceive that this work of art would completely fail to meet Scalia's test for public-funded exhibition, today in the United States, precisely for the very same reasons it failed to meet Hitler's standards of "decency" and "respect" for German values. Yet Scalia and Thomas see absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with such prohibition, indeed they think it would be grand!
Withal, keep in mind that what matters is not whether a work of art is, in fact, indecent by intent, but only that someone may choose to perceive it that way. Both O'Connor and Scalia refer to Andres Serrano's notorious (and particularly innocuous) "Piss Christ" as an example of legitimately prohibited "indecency," as if such description was not in dispute. (Anybody who has ever actually seen the photograph knows how profoundly bland it really is, and that all the hoopla was manifest not because of the photographic image itself, but only because of the work's title.) Thereby, however, they reveal their monumental lack of capacity to grasp ironic description. Serrano's work was intended as an editorial commentary, a metaphorical portrayal of how he believed sincere religion has been disparaged. But there is no room whatsoever in the narrowly framed minds of the majority's 8 members to recognize that artistic expression provides a vehicle for depicting bad examples as well as good. And even the hint of possibility that indecency is a product manufactured not by the hands of artists, but in the minds of beholders instead, casts not the faintest shadow on their profoundly limited capacity for reason. Blaming Rorschach for what is seen in the inkblots has now been codified into the constitutional canon.
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Speaking of urine, and its presumed offensiveness as matter for artistic depiction, the accompanying imagery, one piece a detail from a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, easily puts the lie to such narrow-minded preconceptions. I defy Justices Scalia and Thomas, who espouse smirky contempt for any imagery featuring urine, to sincerely describe these images as "indecent." But if one had to rely solely on a textual description, say as would appear in a grant proposal, of an artist's primary focus on a naked child's genitals and urination, these grotesquely unimaginative minds would be totally incapable of conceiving the sweet humor and profoundly human charm that can be revealed in depictions of such subject matter. Because this material is by preconceived definition, out of context, unfailingly characterized as "indecent" - perhaps even "obscene" - the public will with virtual certainty always be prevented from access to such delightful images in public-funded venues.
What is worse, though, is that there need be no actual subject at controversy to result in a prohibition on expression, when all that matters is that a work of art merely be alleged to fail in a display of "decency" and "respect" for "American values." Forget Serrano. Forget Mapplethorpe. Consider Disney.
When Disney Home Video released "The Little Mermaid" some years ago, the package cover art featured the cartoon's characters, with a small (2") high golden-spired castle in the background. Disney was deluged with thousands of phone calls, complaints aroused by the reaction of one solitary woman in Mesa, Arizona (in concert with the drooling Pavlovian attention of the so-called "news media"), who upon initially seeing the package discerned in the castle "subliminal phallic symbolism, intentionally designed to subvert the minds of children." The self-evident falsity of the charge was totally irrelevant. Never mind that it was a Disney cartoon, the most harmless of all inoffensive images; the owner of the illustration studio that created the art was a devout Mormon, and the illustrator who did the painting was a Baptist Sunday School teacher. These people suffered monumental embarrassment, having to go to great pains to explain to their church memberships that the charge against them was totally bogus, and what is more, they had their financial livelihoods threatened when Disney management - whose art direction staff had previously hired the studio with regularity - reacted by swearing never to employ them again.
It is the judgment of people who see images of Jesus Christ in the patterns of tree bark and shadowed leaves, or the Madonna in puddles of stagnant water, or faces in Martian rock formations, or Elvis with aliens in Las Vegas casinos, that is relied upon for definitions of "indecency." So it is that even the most obvious void in offense may still be characterized as "indecent," as a basis to justify prohibition of public-funded exhibition of artistic expression, since kangaroo court hysterical scapegoating is, in point of fact, The Greatest American Value, to which all must on bended knee pay their "respect."
The United States Supreme Court has said that people have no accountability whatsoever for the product fabricated entirely by their own brains, and they may now effectively punish Rorschach as the one who is responsible for producing "indecent" visions which accusers claim exist in the ink smears. Furthermore, accusers remain totally free from the least burden of proof, beyond their sheer fantasy speculation, and indeed, no substantive evidence ever need be shown to exist since an allegation alone is sufficient to justify discriminatory sanction. That such overtly kangaroo court propositions have been upheld as validly constitutional is precisely the legal philosophical mindset about which Kafka and Orwell warned. Only this time the work is horrifying non-fiction.
Apart from the appalling character of the NEA decision, and the more appalling reasoning employed to justify it, what is most striking is the exquisite quality of David Souter's dissent. Just as Justice Harlan posed the lone dissent in Plessy v Ferguson, exposing the blatant linguistic falsity which corrupted that majority's opinion - which had ruled "separate but equal" railway cars did not serve to discriminate against folks with dark skin - Souter's description represents the only honest portrayal of the issues in question. His logic and principles in law are consistently applied, firmly grounded in rock-solid legal precedent, and he relies on a universally recognized dictionary definition of terms to interpret the meaning of words. David Souter should be justly proud of his work, in this case at least.
Supreme Court Justices come and go, and this matter will surely be revisited in time. As the sun is guaranteed to rise, artists blessed with genuine imagination - and it won't take much, relative to the lack thereof which inevitably resides in the hidebound confines of narrow political minds - will cause the Court ultimately to rule the other way round. And David Souter's dissent will be hailed as a beacon of reason in the darkness of disreputable vacuity, in the very same way Justice Harlan is a hero today in contrast to the Plessy majority.
