Constitutional entrenchment "idiotic" - Antonin Scalia

"Two plus two is... duh... five?" - Justice Minister Tonio Borg in action


US Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia has dismissed Tonio Borg's Constitutional entrenchment proposal as "idiotic", Skip on Toast has learnt.

Speaking at a recent convention in Puerto Rico, the conservative (and staunchly pro-life) US judge claimed that "you have to be an idiot" to believe that a country's Constitution can be chopped and changed so that it reflects your own views, as Dr Borg would like to do with his abortion entrenchment proposal.

"That's the argument of flexibility", Scalia said, "and it goes something like this: The (US) Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break."

"But you would have to be an idiot to believe that," Scalia added. "The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things."

According to Scalia, there can be no room for personal, political or religious beliefs in the Constitution.

Interestingly enough, Scalia's own objections refer to attempts currently made in the USA to secure the opposite of Tonio Borg's intentions. While our Justice Minister seeks to embed a section of the Maltese Criminal Code into the Constitution, American pro-choice activists wish to use exactly the same method in order to Constitutionally entrench women's right to terminate pregnancy.

"(These people) are not looking for legal flexibility, they are looking for rigidity, whether it's the right to abortion or the right to homosexual activity, they want that right to be embedded from coast to coast and to be unchangeable," he said.