Associate Justice Samuel Alito received a little spanking from his purported mentor Justice Scalia yesterday in the form of an admonition for looking to legislative history in interpreting a federal statute.
Alito wrote a unanimous
opinion that contained one paragraph pointing to some language in House and Senate reports that accompanied the legislation in question, explaining that the record also supported the Court's opinion.
Scalia wrote a
concurrence joining Alito's opinion in full, aside from that one paragraph, which he called "illegitimate and ill advised." If, Scalia said, the Court can reach its decision based on the unambiguous text of the statute itself, then there is no need to delve into legislative history, for whatever reason.
Scalia has a solid point, and his distaste for using legislative history is well known, but it's interesting that Alito left the offending paragraph in the opinion, which surely he knew would force Scalia to object.
At any rate, it shows that Alito isn't necessarily the "Scalito" that some have predicted. Or maybe he just did it for fun, to piss Scalia off.
Scalito, you illegitimate bastard
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