By Nathan Hecht, Chief Justice of Texas
AUSTIN – Saturday, Justice Antonin Scalia passed from this life. President Obama, no fan of Justice Scalia’s decisions, called him “one of the towering legal figures of our time?” Why?
For one thing, Justice Scalia believed, simply, that words matter. The words of the Constitution matter. The framers chose them, the Congress endorsed them, and the states ratified them. They were discussed and debated in communities and through the media across the country.
Those words, we decided, are what the government should be. When it comes to government of the people, by the people and for the people, Americans’ holy grail is the Constitution, the sacred compact between “We, the People” and our government. The words matter.
In an article in The Dallas Morning News, Chief Justice Hecht discusses Justice Scalia’s legacy. Here is a link: www.dallasnews.com/opinion.