It's more simple than that: Scalia is a constitutional originalist. He belongs to the right-wing judicial camp that believes the constitution means what it says. Sometimes he gets it wrong and I have no doubt his personal life and culture influences his decisions. But a strong first amendment stance is consistent with originalism.

Outsiders might not realize it but not all "conservatives" are cut from the same cloth. There is a rich and diverse right-wing ideological taxonomy.

Although I don't understand how he reconciles that with his rather strict views on "obscenity" and how that can be strictly regulated.

The constitution doesn't specifically address either, yet nudity can absolutely be regulated (or according to Scalia completely banned) while violence is just fine.

Justice Scalia considers historical exceptions that were accepted at the time that the First Amendment was ratified. His view is that there was such an exception for "obscenity", but not for violence.

I only wish he was similarly strenuous in his interpretation of the 4th Amendment.

He was pretty protective in his opinion in Kyllo (the whole "general public use" assertion being deemed a potential factor, not a determination, in the restriction of an expectation of privacy), though it was centralized on the place as holding an expectation of privacy, not the person.

Though he dissented in Bond (2000), the combination of those two rulings may give fairly powerful protections against technological surveillance.

I was thinking of the decidedly non-technological search in Hudson v. Michigan actually, though I take your point that his record is mixed.

> Scalia is a constitutional originalist. He belongs to the right-wing judicial camp that believes the constitution means what it says.

If that was true, surely he would have to believe that the 1st amendment forbids federal copyright laws?

The Constitution specifically authorizes federal copyright laws. "To Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

There are many problems with copyright, but the ones a "constitutional originalist" should take issue with from that quote are that:

First, inventors and authors frequently aren't the ones who hold exclusive rights to their writings and discoveries under copyright law, as their rights are often signed over to others; and these rights are often continued to be held even after the authors and inventors die.

Second, there weren't any movies or videos or even recordings back when the US Constitution was written, so their writings couldn't possibly directly apply to these media.

It takes interpretation on the parts of these supposed "constitutional originalist" justices to decree that these new media do in fact fall under copyright law.

The current state of copyright law is far more a transgression against the bit about "securing for a limited Time" than against the 1st amendment.

the supreme court's "liberals" and "conservatives" aren't really divided along the lines that exist in the legislature. scalia is a pretty strict constitutional originalist and pretty consistently gives broad support to free speech.

It was a turnabout from these comments he made in 2008:

http://www.lawsofplay.com/articles/justice-scalias-opinion-o...

I'm not so sure of that. We don't get an exact transcript of what he said, nor what he was asked. It appears to me that he may have actually been thinking of "adult (or mature) video games" as pornography, which has always been subject to regulation. The opinion was quite clear in distinguishing obscenity (a term limited by SCOTUS to sexual content) from violence. It's not obvious to me whether the conversation recounted in that article was nearly so clear.