Does Andrew Cuomo get to pick the real Easter Sunday and Palm Sunday? See NY PML Sec 105 and Sec 109 for text and perhaps Scalia will use this statute to illustrate how to interpret legal texts.
Meanwhile Andrew Cuomo goes to church and tells Greek Bettors to go to hell.
Scalia Offers Up 57 Varieties for Interpreting Legal Texts
By JESS BRAVIN
Justice Antonin Scalia closed the Supreme Court term last month with a string of stinging dissents, slamming the majority for upholding the health overhaul law and calling out President Barack Obama's decision to defer deportations of some younger illegal immigrants.
"I've been a judge for 30 years and a law professor for 10, that's 40 years investment" in the field, Justice Scalia said in an interview.
The time had come, he said, "to sum up the things I care most about with respect to the law." Justice Scalia, 76-years old, was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
Justice Scalia insisted that his book, "Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts," carries no ideological bent. The "main controversy among judges," he said, "is not conservative vs. liberal. The main controversy is how to approach the application of legal text."
Justice Scalia long has championed an approach, called originalism or textualism, which seeks to apply the text of a statute or constitutional provision according to its meaning at the time of adoption.
Co-written with the lexicographer Bryan A. Garner, "Reading Law" presents 57 "sound principles of interpretation," or canons, for doing so. Reflecting Justice Scalia's occasionally pugnacious style, it also identifies conflicting principles, concluding, as the book puts it, with "13 falsities exposed."
These "false canons," Justice Scalia said, are "often recited, but have no basis in reality."
Justice Scalia declined to expand upon the court's latest decisions, or to comment on leaks that followed the acrimonious healthcare decision on June 28, when the justices voted 5-4 to uphold the overhaul, except for a provision requiring states to expand Medicaid eligibility or forfeit federal funding for the program.
According to CBS News, the court's other conservatives were infuriated when Chief Justice John Roberts defied expectations and joined four liberal justices to find the measure constitutional. "I never talk about the internal workings of the court, and I don't even confirm the reports" of internal discord, Justice Scalia said.
Speakeasy
Infinite Justice: The David Foster Wallace Connection to Scalia's New BookAmong the legacies of David Foster Wallace, the pioneering postmodernist who produced influential essays, short stories and the novel "Infinite Jest" before his 2008 suicide, count this: Antonin Scalia, author.
Law Blog
"The dissent speaks for itself," Justice Scalia said.
In "Reading Law," however, Justice Scalia displays little reticence in scoring other cases as rightly or wrongly decided.
He cites Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision recognizing abortion rights, to exemplify "the false notion that the spirit of a statute should prevail over its letter."
The ruling, based on the 14th Amendment's protection of liberty, struck down abortion bans "that in no way contradicted any specific provision of the Constitution," he writes.
But for his model opinion, Justice Scalia praises a dissent in an insurance case written by his longtime liberal nemesis, retired Justice John Paul Stevens.
By focusing on the distinction between the word "damage" (injury) and "damages" (compensation), the Stevens dissent "exemplifies the attention to text, and specifically to the original meaning, that we seek here to promote," "Reading Law" says.
"He was right in that case," Justice Scalia said. "I give credit where credit is due."
Written with a verve rare in legal reference works, "Reading Law" already has found admirers in disparate quarters.
"Justice Scalia is a wonderful literary stylist," said Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, a former Obama Justice Department official who provided a blurb for the jacket.
Still, Mr. Tribe said, the book "never comes to terms meaningfully with the...profound inconsistencies in the way Justice Scalia applies his interpretative theories to the Constitution."
Anticipating such critiques, the justice's preface warns that he may have written past opinions "that contradict what is written here" and might write future ones that don't comply either. "Yet the prospect of 'gotchas' for past and future inconsistencies holds no fear," he writes.
"That was pretty clever, wasn't it?" Justice Scalia said.
Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin@wsj.com
I-
Thanks for the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy, if you give me a mailing address.
Claude Solnik
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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
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