During Monday's debate between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown, the candidates were asked who is their model Supreme Court justice. Scott Brown's answer: Antonin Scalia.

For those of you who may have just become aware of Antonin Scalia, here's a primer:

Antonin Scalia voted against protecting equal pay for equal work for women in the Lilly Ledbetter case. Justice Ginsburg wrote in dissent:

Ledbetter's evidence demonstrated that her current pay was discriminatorily low due to a long series of decisions reflecting Goodyear's pervasive discrimination against women [...] Yet, under the Court's decision, the discrimination Ledbetter proved is not redressable under Title VII. [...] The Court's approbation of these consequences is totally at odds with the robust protection against workplace discrimination Congress intended Title VII to secure.

Scott Brown's kind of Supreme Court justice has been voting against women for a long time. He has repeatedly voted to restrict a woman's right to choose, including in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where Scalia wrote:

The issue is whether [the right to choose] is a liberty protected by the Constitution of the United States. I am sure it is not.

Scott Brown's kind of Supreme Court justice. On executing innocents (PDF), in the Troy Davis case, Scalia said:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent.

And in this edition of Antonin Scalia is an asshole, responding to conservative Seventh Circuit Appeals Court judge Richard Posner's demolition of Scalia's purported 'originalism', Scalia reacts as one would expect of a bullying asshole, not a Supreme Court justice:

It was only a matter of days before Scalia himself got into the ring. First, at a book tour event in California earlier this month, Scalia called the piece a “hatchet job” before a crowd of 500 legal practitioners. And yesterday, in an interview with Reuters, Scalia transformed his response from a defensive to an offensive one, calling Posner’s accusation of an inconsistent judicial record, “to put it bluntly, a lie.” Scalia denied that he uses legislative history in his decisions: “We are textualists. We are originalists. We are not nuts.” Lucky for us, Scalia didn’t pass up the chance to give TNR and its readers a shout out: “You can get away with it in The New Republic, I suppose, but not to a legal audience.” [Emphasis supplied.] And in case you were wondering, Scalia was lying. Again.

On Bush v. Gore, when the Felonious Five (Rehnquist, O'Connor, Thomas, Kennedy and Scalia) stole the 2000 election from Al Gore and selected George W. Bush President, Scalia said "get over it."

Scalia has long been a bullying asshole. And judging from Scott Brown's performances in his debates with Elizabeth Warren so far, we can see why Scalia is Brown's kind of Supreme Court justice. After all, one bullying asshole is sure to admire another.

