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The debate begins Monday, October 26, at 2:30 p.m. EST at this link

I will be liveblogging the discussion here. My comments in blue.

A.S. Indicates Antonin Scalia. S.B. indicates Stephen Breyer

Moderated by NBC’s Pete Williams. I think the Arizona Public Media site is flooded right now. The video feed was inconsistent, and kept breaking, so I was not able to transcribe everything. Total NPR fail.

Justice Scalia is wearing a dark grey suit, a light blue shirt, with a dark tie. He is sitting comfortably in a leather chair, gesticulating like a Sicilian should.

Justice Breyer is wearing a cream colored suit, a blue and white striped shirt, and a red tie.

SB: Freedom of speech, Deprivation of Liberty, Cruel and Unusual do not explain themselves. Need to go back to find original intent. Do not know what people in 18th Century thought was cruel and unusual. The questions should be how do the values they enacted then apply to our circumstances today? SB thinks people are not in favor of execution for robbery, or executive a 13 year-old. When we look around the world, hardly anyone that executes a child, even over 12. Question becomes, where do we draw the line today, not where they drew the line in 18th century, in terms of the values they enacted in the constitution in the 18th century.

AS: Just because I would not practice execution does not mean it is unconstitutional. I would find pillorying constitutional and stupid. An enormous amount of things are constitutional and stupid. NINO FTW!

SB: The term is cruel and unusual. Over time, people have different idea of what is cruel.

-I apologize, the feed is very choppy, and it just dropped out, I will try to reconnect.

AS: Some of the provisions in the Bill of Rights according trial rights to the Defendant, many people do not think these provisions are as important as the Framers thought, including the right to trial by jury, which was abolished by U.K.

-Feed dropped again. I am actually attempting to predict what Scalia was saying. I bet he was about to go into a rant on Crawford.

-Video turns back on, and Breyer is talking about the trial of Sir Water Raleigh. I was right! Confrontation clause.

S.B. Scalia doesn’t have a clue what founders intended. SB looks at purposes of confrontation clause, what values they had in mind, and try to apply that as best as they can to circumstances of the present. Justice Scalia does not take this approach. If we didn’t take this approach, where would we be? With school segregation. At time they passed 14th amendment, and said people should be treated equally, schools were segregated. Oh harsh. When people passed 14th amendment, they were trying to create circumstances of equality where people would be brought into the society.

S.B.: Separate but equal did not work. Basic value underlying 14th amendment is a value saying no segregated schools. If that wasn’t clear in 1880’s, it was certainly clear in 1954.  Court did not follow details of what people think.

A.S. As for Brown, I would agree with Justice Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson, as an originalist. We begin with the text that prohibited racial discrimination. Some states had segregated schools, but some states abolished segregated schools after 14th amendment. Don’t choose jurisprudence based on the method that produces the best result.

Q: About Heller.

AS: Heller was not a hard question. Not even close! (applause).One commentator during entire 19th century though 2nd amendment preserved right to join a militia. He acknowledged that he was the only one. Bad example for a case where it is difficult to find an answer.

SB: They didn’t apply it at that time to stop bazookas because bazookas did not exist.  My belief is that is a matter of degree, not a matter of kind. How much you put on basic value

SB: Talking about “no vehicles in the park.” Does that apply to a jeep? Great for a teacher’s discussion. You don’t know without knowing why the wrote the sign. True throughout law. Congress enacts a statute. Cannot kill members of the endangered species. If a red skill was not endangered 30 years ago, but today it is endangered. Didn’t quite get the gist bc the feed broke, but I think he was explaining that meanings of terms change.

Update: From Josh W. who called AZPM media Department, they were not expecting the event to be so popular and do not have the bandwidth.

More after the jump.

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The debate begins Monday, October 26, at 2:30 p.m. EST at this link:

From How Appealing:

Scalia, Breyer to Discuss Constitution at UA-Hosted Event; The UA’s William H. Rehnquist Center is hosting this rare opportunity to watch two sitting Supreme Court justices discuss the U.S. Constitution; Arizona Public Media will broadcast the discussion live”

“A Conversation on the Constitution: Principles of Constitutional and Statutory Interpretation,” a discussion between Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer, takes place Monday, Oct. 26 at 11:30 a.m. PST at the Leo Rich Theatre in Tucson.

The Office of University Communications at the University of Arizona issued this news release.

I will be watching it. So should you.

As you all should known Justices Scalia and Ginsburg are huge Opera fans.

From today’s Baltimore Sun, Ginsburg and Scalia onstage at Washington National Opera’s ‘Aridane,’  (H/T How Appealing):

Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, who have been known to get in the act for WNO events, were up there among the supernumeraries, along with Martin Ginsburg (the justice’s husband), D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and philanthropist Adrienne Arsht. The audience particularly enjoyed the sight of the bubbly character.

But the most endearing image is of “Zerbinetta (performed by Lyubov Petrova), jumping into Scalia’s lap. You don’t see that everyday.”

Regarding the cozy seat, the Washington Examiner reports, “At one point, Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova sat on Scalia’s lap and placed her arm around him, causing the audience to burst into applause. Scalia says he can’t remember having more fun on stage.”

Justice Scalia found in Barnes v. Glen Theatre Inc. and ERIE V. PAP’S A.M. that nude dancing is not protected speech under the First Amendment. I wonder how Justice Scalia would consider this performance?

This Constitution is the Crown Jewel of my collection, and proudly stands on my desk at my office in Chambers.

Justice Thomas wrote,  “This is your Constitution.” Justice Scalia scrawled his classic Nino signature. But how did this Constitution come to be? Months and months of strategery.

Check out the story, after the jump. Trust me, it’s good. And I have pictures to document the entire story.

Update: Welcome Above The Law Readers. If you like these posts, follow me on Twitter and check out my RSS Feed.

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From WSJ Law Blog (H/T Josh N.)

Justice Scalia gave an interview with CSPAN, and he had a few choice words about lawyers joining the legal profession.

Well, you know, two chiefs ago, Chief Justice Burger, used to complain about the low quality of counsel. I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.

I mean there’d be a, you know, a defense or public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?

I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.

And they appear here in the Court, I mean, even the ones who will only argue here once and will never come again. I’m usually impressed with how good they are. Sometimes you get one who’s not so good. But, no, by and large I don’t have any complaint about the quality of counsel, except maybe we’re wasting some of our best minds.

Devoting too many of our very best minds to the legal field, eh? Lawyers don’t produce anything, eh? Classic Scalia.