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Why Professor Dershowitz Rocks

The challenge. This time to Scalia on his dissent, blogged about a couple of days ago by one of our favorite readers:

I hereby challenge Justice Scalia to a debate on whether Catholic doctrine permits the execution of a factually innocent person who has been tried, without constitutional flaw, but whose innocence is clearly established by new and indisputable evidence. Justice Scalia is always willing to debate issues involving religious teachings. He has done so, for example, with the great Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, and with others as well. He also has debated me at the Harvard Law School. Although I am neither a rabbi nor a priest, I am confident that I am right and he is wrong under Catholic Doctrine. Perhaps it takes chutzpah to challenge a practicing Catholic on the teachings of his own faith, but that is a quality we share.
I invite him to participate in the debate at Harvard Law School, at Georgetown Law School, or anywhere else of his choosing. The stakes are high, because if he loses?if it is clear that his constitutional views permitting the execution of factually innocent defendants are inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church?then, pursuant to his own published writings, he would have no choice but to conform his constitutional views to the teachings of the Catholic Church or to resign from the Supreme Court.

Dersh is one of the best debaters around as is Scalia. I would pay an awful lot to see this matchup. Hat Tip: ATL.

UPDATE -- I just emailed with Dersh and asked him whether he had ever debated a Supreme Court Justice before and he said yes -- he debated Scalia in his class a few years back. I also asked him what he thought his most famous debate was and he said probably his debate with Rabbi Meir David Kahane:

SECOND UPDATE -- A friendly reader points out that it is "interesting that the dissent which sparked the SCOTUS ruling was issued by a former Catholic nun (Judge Barkett)."

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on August 19, 2009 (boomark / email).