The Onion has this somewhat amusing story (hat tip to The Irish Trojan’s Blog), the best part of which is the title: American People Ruled Unfit to Govern. The opening reads:
WASHINGTON, DC—In a historic decision with major implications for the future of U.S. participatory democracy, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 Monday that the American people are unfit to govern.
The controversial decision, the first of its kind in the 210-year history of U.S. representative government, was, according to Justice David Souter, “a response to the clear, demonstrable incompetence and indifference of the current U.S. citizenry in matters concerning the operation of this nation’s government.”
As a result of the ruling, the American people will no longer retain the power to choose their own federal, state, and local officials or vote on matters of concern to the public.
My question is why The Onion has Justice Scalia writing the majority opinion (with Justice Kennedy the lone dissenter):
“This decision was by no means easy, but it unfortunately had to be done,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, who penned the majority decision in the case. “The U.S. Constitution is very clear: In the event that the voting public becomes incapacitated or otherwise unfit to carry out its duties of self-governance, there is a danger posed to the republic, and the judicial branch is empowered to remove said public and replace it with a populace more qualified to lead.”
“In light of their unmitigated apathy toward issues of import to the nation’s welfare and their inability to grasp even the most basic principles upon which participatory democracy is built, we found no choice but to rule the American people unfit to govern at this time,” Scalia concluded.
Justices Ginsburg, Stevens and Breyer go unmentioned in the lampoon.
Now I have my disagreements with Justice Scalia, but a refusal to defer to the American electorate or to doubt their competence in nearly all matters is not among them. If effective humor is based on truth, where is the joke–or even the irony–in this? Perhaps some reader can enlighten me on this humoric (which may not be a word, but it does rhyme with “sophomoric”) choice.
Update: Clayton Cramer offers these subtle comments:
That’s what makes it obviously parody, because Scalia is one of the few current Supreme Court justices that actually does believe that, unless clearly contrary to the Constitution, the people do have a right to make their own laws. The Onion is parodying Randy Barnett’s theory of the Constitution in which the masses are not trusted to make their own laws, except for those laws that implement Barnett’s libertarian ideas.
Obviously this is a parody (I used the term “lampoon”) of theories that would permit broader judicial review than either Kramer or Justice Scalia would approve. But I still do not see why it is funny to put these words in the mouth of Justice Scalia, who most vocally rejects such theories, while omitting from the parody those justices who are the most sympathetic and putting Justice Kennedy in dissent. Perhaps this is just one of those supremely “ironic” humor things that cannot be explained.
Further Update: Several readers offered a better explanation than Clayton, and one that seems plausible to me. Here is a representative email:
The writer of the article and the editors are not lawyers. Moreover, even if they were I doubt that they would be as familiar with the intricacies of each Justice’s jurisprudence (very few in the press seem to be, as evidenced by the nation’s major newspapers constant talk about the “liberal” four justices and the “conservative” five justices). To those in mainstream culture who have some familiarity with the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia is seen as the epitomy of the conservative justice. Conservatives at their extreme, to those in the mainstream of the press culture, are fascists. Thus, Scalia is the natural choice for the guy who would write the opinion telling us we’re too stupid to rule ourselves.
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