Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Suggests Americans Should 'Revolt' If Taxes Get Too High
Antonin Scalia, the longest-serving United States Supreme Court Justice on the bench, recently suggested to a group of law school students that if taxes get too high people "should revolt."
According to a CBS Washington, D.C. report, Scalia made the comment Tuesday when he was asked by a student about the constitutionality of the income tax during his presentation for the annual "Rose Lecture" at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
Government, he explained to the student, has the right to implement the tax, but "if it reaches a certain point, perhaps you should revolt."
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Scalia, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, also discussed milestones in his career, such as his 1989 decision which ruled that flag-burning was constitutionally protected speech.
"You're entitled to criticize the government, and you can use words, you can use symbols, you can use telegraph, you can use Morse code, you can burn a flag," said Scalia.
In support of his originalist view of the U.S. Constitution, Scalia also argued that it is not open to evolution or change with time.
"Any judge who likes the opinion he arrives at in every case is a bad judge — because the law is not supposed to be what you'd like it to be; it's supposed to be what it is," said Scalia, according to The University of Tennessee.
He noted that the flag-burning ruling was a prime example of this originalist view, because despite his personal opinion about the subject, he had to vote according to his judicial interpretation of the First Amendment as it was originally written.
"The Constitution is not a living organism for Pete's sake," said Scalia. "It's a law. It means what it meant when it was adopted."
