Shocker. I sometimes wonder what I could have done with all that time I spent in law school trying to square Scalia’s “principles” with his outcomes, had I just realized that his outcomes were his only principles.  To wit:

Now, within days of the historic ruling, Scalia is releasing a new book in which he finds fault with a Roosevelt-era Supreme Court decision that forms a critical part of the legal undergirding for the health care reform law. For Scalia, that’s a dramatic turnaround, because he has previously embraced the premise of that decision in an opinion he authored in 2005 that supporters of the Affordable Care Act have frequently cited.

In Scalia’s new book, a 500-page disquisition on statutory construction being published this week, he says the landmark 1942 ruling Wickard v. Filburn — which has served as the lynchpin of the federal government’s broad authority to regulate interstate economic activities under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause — was wrongly decided.

You know how people sometimes describe the embarrassment of losing their religion?  I sometimes feel the same way about the faith I used to have in the US Supreme Court.