PICK A THEORY,...

PICK A THEORY, ANY THEORY. At this thread, some commenters tried to defend Scalia's credentials as a principled originalist who was never political. In response, I mentioned Bush v. Gore, which not only had no conceivable "originalist" justification but failed to conform even to basic standards of the rule of law in order to legitimize the presidency of Scalia's favorite candidate. A commenter then responded with an, ah, innovative defense:

True, the court didn't rely on originalist arguments in Bush v. Gore, but that route was arguably foreclosed to it. Otherwise, you would have it overturn precedent that forbids arbitrary and disparate treatment to a state's voters in its different counties -- a precedent established in 1963. Scalia recognizes the doctrine of stare decisis saying it is a compromise operating on all judicial philosophies, origninalism no less than any others.

I trust that the argument that -- on the same week in which Scalia called for overturning two long-standing landmark precedents that were actually directly controlling to the case at hand! -- Scalia had no choice but to accept stare decisis in Bush v. Gore based on a precedent that said absolutely nothing about how ballots cast with different voting systems should be counted, is too transparently silly to merit substantial engagement. But this desperate gambit can be used to illustrate why grand theories don't do very much to constrain judges in practice.