Justice Scalia and Privacy rights.

I felt one more issue on Scalia was warranted due to his opinion on privacy rights.  In this case he said the fourth Amendment did not protect one's right to privacy.  Interestingly though, he ruled in favor of people's rights to privacy on many occasions including the cases of police using thermal imagers to see into people's homes, DNA swabs and placing tracking devices on people's cars.  He also ruled against the police with respect to them searching a car after a traffic infraction in the search for evidence of another crime and against the use of drug sniffing dogs without a warrant.  In all these cases Scalia noted that while it is noble for police to want to try to solve crimes, exceeding the limits of a warrant or an infraction violates the people's right to be secure in their "persons, houses, papers and effects."  However, he was not opposed to wiretapping.  The reason being that conversations are not protected by the Constitution as they are considered public.  As such, he deemed that phone calls were public conversations in the same way a conversation may be carried out in public at a restaurant or park.  However, emails in my opinion, including text messages count as papers for they are not spoken allowed and act like letters in the mail thus legally protected if we apply his textualist views.  Likewise, espionage and eavesdropping laws would not be protected if you apply Scalia's view of the United States Constitution and shared his disagreement with the 1965 Griswold case which decided that we have a right to privacy. 

Final Thought:  I find myself agreeing with Scalia here with respect to anything verbally spoken not being protected. As a matter of fact it brings to question if anything transmitted through the internet to another is considered private as the internet can be considered part of the public square.  As such, Facebook, Twitter, and anything publically posted is absolutely without protections. But our bodies and the things on us, our homes and what goes on in it, and our other property like our cars and the items in them are protected due to the 4th amendment and its specifically listing these as protected from search and seizure without a warrant.  So if Scalia and his legacy is used as a springboard for a more textualist view of the Constitution, it may bring forth an entirely new approach to rulings in the Supreme Court and the rule of law.  In fact it may create a link between liberal and conservative judges like it did between Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  If used as such, the liberal conservative divide can be shrunk!  I look forward to seeing the results of Scalia's legacy in politics and law.