Our august judges

In an interview with the BBC, Justice Antonin Scalia suggests that torture is relative. "You can't come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say 'Oh it's torture, and therefore it's no good'," he said. The Justice went on, "Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the constitution?"

To some of us, yes.

This kind of arrogant pronouncement on issues that are or may soon be before the court is not new with Justice Scalia, a man whose idea of judicial restraint does not include circumspection.

Nor is it especially surprising that he would take a cavalier view of police brutality--the Justice is certain that he will never be the man in the back of the police station.

(Forty or more years ago, my brother lived next to a police station in Albany, New York. On weekends in warm weather, he could hear the sounds of the cops beating up people.)

What is surprising is that the Justice would display ignorance of the basic provisions of the Constitution. If the interviewer is to be believed, Justice Scalia does not know the difference between the 8th Amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual treatment after conviction, and the 5th Amendment, which protects us against forced self-incrimination. Is this an error by a British journalist unfamiliar with our written constitution. Or is it a revealing comment by a man who ultimately believes in a government of men, and not of laws?