The Supreme Court is an interesting organization, and the Justices themselves are quite the intriguing lot. So which Justice philosophy to you find the most respected and why?

A better question would be how to educate yourself about them...

I read Scalia Dissents which put together many of Scalia's dissents on certain issues. I believe that of all the current Justices on the Court, Scalia, is the only Justice who actually has a working and practical method of interpretting the laws.

Scalia relies on Textualism and Originalism (not to be confused with Original Intent). Scalia believes that we should take the Constitution, and the statutes to mean what they say. If the interpretation is vague, rather than looking at the intent of the legislature, we should look at the historical and societal applications.

Many condemn Scalia for being too Conservative, and claim that he uses his method to promote Conservative Ideals, however, if you look at his cases, oftentimes he votes with the majority against conservative political policies, i.e. Flag Burning & Punitive Damages.

dmk

Thomas Jefferson, in his autobiography, wrote of the federal judiciary: "We have seen too that, contrary to all correct example, they are in the habit of going out of the question before them, to throw an anchor ahead and grapple further hold for future advances of power. They are then in fact the corps of sappers & miners, steadily working to undermine the independant rights of the States, & to consolidate all power in the hands of that government in which they have so important a freehold estate."

In 1982, Bruce Allen Murphy, then assistant professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University, wrote a book, entitled The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, in which he documented his discovery of letters and papers of the late Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, which contained some of the collection of notes and letters of Supreme Court Justice Brandeis. He detailed the extra-judicial activities of Justice Louis D. Brandeis and revealed that while Felix Frankfurter was professor at Harvard, Justice Brandeis would communicate with him about his feelings on a particular social goal, and request that he have some of his most gifted law students produce some papers, essays, and articles for the law reviews, which professed these views. He wrote: "Once these articles were in print, the justice would cite the information and analysis, as well as "the mandate of opinion in the Law Reviews," to lobby various politicians and his own colleagues on the Court. It is interesting that these student-authors would later be placed by Brandeis and Frankfurter in a plethora of New Deal Agencies, where they could help to implement many of the policies that they had earlier been influenced to propose in print."

Can I vote for Diana Ross?