FORT SMITH -- The U.S. Constitution should be interpreted as the framers wrote it and not with the changing standards of the day, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said during a lecture Thursday hosted by the U.S. Marshals Museum.
"Do you think the Constitution would have been ratified if one of its articles said, 'What this Constitution means, what it requires and what it prohibits shall be whatever the Supreme Court of the United States decides from year to year?'" he said in answer to a Southside High School student's question.
Scalia, the longest serving member of the nation's high court, was the first speaker in the three-year Winthrop Paul Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series created to discuss the U.S. Marshals Service's history with each branch of the federal government.
The series was endowed by the former lieutenant governor's widow, Lisenne Rockefeller, last year.
The U.S. Marshals Museum has raised about $20 million of the estimated $50 million needed to build a 50,000-square-foot national museum on the banks of the Arkansas River. Part of the museum's mission, along with telling the Marshals Service story, is to help educate people about civics and government.
About 2,000 people -- including 800 area school students -- at the Fort Smith Convention Center heard Scalia explain his judicial philosophy of originalism.
"That is, the Constitution means what it meant when the people adopted it," he said. "It doesn't morph and mean whatever it ought to mean today."
The remark drew applause from the audience.
He said that federalism, the distribution of power among the people, is diminished when it is concentrated in a small group, such as the nine members of the Supreme Court, to decide the important issues of the day.
Having the Supreme Court decide questions about abortion or the death penalty takes away from the right of the people or the states to decide such issues, he said.
He said that during a luncheon before the speech, he commented that four of the court's justices represented every borough of New York City but Manhattan. And of the nine justices, six were Catholic and three were Jews.
"We weren't meant to be representative," he said. "We decide the meaning of what the people adopted in statutes and the Constitution."
Scalia dwelt briefly on the purpose of the lecture series, saying that his only connection with the Marshals Service is the protection it provides to federal judges.
U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson of the Eastern District of Virginia, who introduced Scalia on Thursday, had more to say about the law enforcement agency as one of its former directors.
Hudson said the history of the Marshals Service was the history of law enforcement in the United States. He said shortly after Congress created the Marshals Service and the 12 judicial districts in 1789, President George Washington was skeptical that such a civilian law enforcement agency was necessary, although he appointed the first 13 marshals.
Hudson said the Marshals Service's duties evolved from collecting the federal whiskey tax and conducting the census in the 18th century to scouring the world today for America's most wanted fugitives.
He said the U.S. Marshals Museum will perpetuate the Marshals Service legacy and commemorate the sacrifices made by the 260 deputy marshals who died to enforce the Constitution.
NW News on 02/27/2015