Appearing on Tuesday's New Day, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin renewed his lambasting of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as he asserted that Scalia's dissent on the Court's gay marriage ruling was "unprecedented in its vitriol." The CNN analyst saw the conservative justice showing "abuse and contempt" for his fellow justices. Toobin also repeated his characterization of Justice Scalia as the "'get off my lawn' justice."
After host Chris Cuomo asked if it was "unusual" for several justices to read out loud their dissenting opinions, Toobin responded:
Unprecedented in its vitriol, but only on the part of Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia really established himself this term as the "get off my lawn justice." I mean, really, his level of hostility and ridicule of his colleagues was unlike anything I have seen in 20 years of covering the Court and really a different level of magnitude in terms of his abuse and contempt for his colleagues I'd ever seen before. The rest of them basically standard operating procedure. Vigorous disagreement but respectful.
After Cuomo brought up objections to the legality of the ruling from Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Toobin predicted:
I think that will ultimately be seen by people as dead-enders objecting to the tide of history that is rolling over them. The Supreme Court is final, and it's legal in all 50 states, and people are going to get married in all 50 states. And, you know what, everybody's going to get used it.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, June 30, New Day on CNN from about 8:50 a.m.:
CHRIS CUOMO: How about the infighting on the Court? That seemed unique, no matter what you say about the decisions. Justices reading dissents, writing their own dissents, taking issue with each other, especially Scalia who's such a big voice. Unusual?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Unprecedented in its vitriol, but only on the part of Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia really established himself this term as the "get off my lawn justice." I mean, really, his level of hostility and ridicule of his colleagues was unlike anything I have seen in 20 years of covering the Court and really a different level of magnitude in terms of his abuse and contempt for his colleagues I'd ever seen before. The rest of them basically standard operating procedure. Vigorous disagreement but respectful.
CUOMO: He stood out also because it was personal. Sometimes a dissenter or most of the time a dissent is to lay out a basic framework of a jurisprudential basis of how you see the law. This wasn't about that. This was like "I don't like the government telling me how to live my life."
TOOBIN: It was ridicule.
CUOMO: Yes.
TOOBIN: It was ridicule at his colleagues. It was ridicule at certain positions before the court. And, you know, one of the things that justices always say, it's really good that we have the summers off because it allows everybody to calm down. And by the time they come back on the first Monday in October, you know, things have recovered their equilibrium. It will be interesting to see if this sort of animus continues in the fall.
(...)
CUOMO: What about the pushback? The Texas AG saying you don't have to follow it. Ted Cruz saying it's, you know, not the real law-
TOOBIN: You know, I think that will ultimately be seen by people as dead-enders objecting to the tide of history that is rolling over them. The Supreme Court is final, and it's legal in all 50 states, and people are going to get married in all 50 states. And, you know what, everybody's going to get used it.
