In a case where the Supreme Court had to decide what is golf and who is a golfer, Scalia sarcastically questions: “Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? Either out of humility or out of self-respect (one or the other) the Court should decline to answer this incredibly difficult and incredibly silly question.” At times Scalia cannot control his exasperation and bursts out, “The Court must be living in another world. Day by day, case by case, it is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognise.”

In the case of Morrison v. Olson, where the issue was of the allocation of power among Congress, the President, and the courts, Scalia, in his dissent, thunders: “Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep’s clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.”

Scalia would possibly have an epileptic fit if he were acquainted with our Supreme Court’s expansive interpretation of the expression “life” in Article 21 and the judicial technique of deducing several fundamental rights from the reservoir of Article 21. The delegation of Indian judges and lawyers which is shortly visiting the US as part of the Indo-US exchange will have a hard time convincing Scalia about the merits and the utility of our Supreme Court judgments. It is hoped that none of them will be infected by Scalia’s illiberal judicial philosophy, which has no place in our Constitutional scheme and the existing socio-economic realities.

... contd.