Intellectual humility from Justice Scalia
Chris Green
Justice Scalia's short concurrence in the human-gene-patentability case this morning strikes an amusing note of humilty about the Justice's ability to understand "the fine details of molecular biology" in the Court's opinion, saying of them, "I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief." While some have mocked Scalia for the concurrence, one could see this as a nice application of knowledge as the norm of assertion (see here at pp. 22-23): judges and others lacking knowledge should abstain from speaking on a subject.