Justice Scalia Looks Forward to Hearing NSA Spying Case

Justice Antonin Scalia signaled during a law school talk on March 21 that the Supreme Court is very much aware that legal challenges to the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance programs are headed toward the high court—and he, for one, thinks the cases will be intriguing.

The court’s most voluble member, an unabashed entertainer who jokes that he wants to do “nasty conservative things,” seemed fascinated by a question he got from an audience member at an unusual session sponsored by Brooklyn Law School. In the context of controversy over the constitutionality of various NSA domestic spying initiatives, the questioner wondered whether Scalia considered data stored on computer drives to be the sort of “effects” covered by the Fourth Amendment’s protection against “unreasonable” government searches.