I used to feel like that - that Justice Scalia was an thoughtful, intellectually honest justice that I profoundly disagreed with simply because I found his foundational principles alien and wrong.<p>Then came <i>Eldred v. Ashcroft</i>. Larry Lessig, argued the case before the Supreme Court. In his retrospective on the case [1], Lessig describes how he built his argument on the <i>Lopez&#x2F;Morrison</i> line of decisions which said that Congress&#x27;s enumerated powers had to be interpeted so that they are structurally limited. In <i>Lopez&#x2F;Morrison</i>, Scalia agreed with the argument that Congress can&#x27;t regulate whatever they want simply by declaring it to be related to interstate commerce. Lessig&#x27;s argument in <i>Eldred</i> was that a similar structural limit should apply to the copyright power: Congress shouldn&#x27;t be able to establish effectively unlimited copyright &quot;on the installment plan&quot;.<p>I want to be clear what I am claiming here. I&#x27;m not saying Scalia was intellectually dishonest because Lessig lost. I&#x27;m claiming it because (as described in the retrospective) the Court <i>didn&#x27;t even address his core argument</i>. Even if Ginsburg didn&#x27;t want to include it in her majority opinion (perhaps because she didn&#x27;t agree with the <i>Lopez&#x2F;Morrison</i> decisions), Scalia could have explained why <i>Eldred</i> was different in a concurrence, but he didn&#x27;t. That&#x27;s where I see the intellectual dishonesty.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.legalaffairs.org&#x2F;issues&#x2F;March-April-2004&#x2F;story_lessig_marapr04.msp" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.legalaffairs.org&#x2F;issues&#x2F;March-April-2004&#x2F;story_le...</a>