It is interesting that Justices of Scalia's bent (i.e. to the right) often complain that other justices live in an "ivory tower" and ignore the "real world." Scalia is a perfect example of how a rightward judge can be just as blind to the world around ( or should we say "below"? ) him as anyone else. To him the Constitution is an intellectual exercise, and his pronouncements on the 'rules' are as binding as a professor listing "givens" on a law school test. Educated at elite schools, whisked off onto an escalator of choice jobs that keep them from mixing with the 'hoi polloi', most of our top judges really don't have a clue how the "justice system" really works for most Americans. After all, this is the same Scalia who suggests (rather strongly) that civil lawsuits under section 1983 could actually replace the "exclusionary rule" in protecting Americans from their own government. Yes, I suppose in a textbook that might be the case. But the world is not a textbook, and our judges need to know that. Not all judges of the SC or Federal Circuit are of that ilk, but those with 'alternative' backgrounds are becoming more rare all the time. Justices like Marshall (or O'Connor from the other party) at least had an opportunity to feel themselves the impact of the "real world" long before they reached the bench. (Marshall, obviously, as an African American from the segregration era, O'Connor couldn't land a good job at firswt because she was a female).

We don't need any more idealogues - right or left. Adherence to the Constitution does not demand that a judge wear blinkers about the differences between the Constitution's written goals and its actual implementation. Rather, judges should be able to see both in order to close the gap. Scalia is like a fundamentalist scholar who worships the Torah and ignores the world to spend his whole life studying it and arguing over it, with little concept of how or even whether such arguments influence the "real world" of average people living around him. Innocent or Guilty? What could it matter if the sacred text doesn't worry about it?