Cite as: 518 U. S. 668 (1996)
Scalia, J., dissenting
text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional?
The Court seeks to avoid the charge that it ignores the centuries-old understandings and practices of our people by recounting, Umbehr, ante, at 681-683, shocking examples of raw political patronage in contracting, most of which would be unlawful under the most rudimentary bribery law. (It selects, of course, only the worst examples from the sources I have cited, omitting the more common practices that permit one author to say, with undeniable accuracy, that "honorable and prudent businessmen competing for government ventures make campaign contributions" out of "a desire to do what [is] thought necessary to remain eligible," and that "[m]any contractors routinely do so to both parties." Heard, supra, at 145.) These "examples of covert, widely condemned, and sometimes illegal government action," it says, do not "legitimize the government discrimination." Umbehr, ante, at 683. But of course it is not the county's or city's burden (or mine) to "legitimize" all patronage practices; it is Umbehr's and O'Hare's (and the Court's) to show that all patronage practices are not only "illegitimate" in some vague moral or even precise legal sense, but that they are unconstitutional. It suffices to demonstrate the error of the Court's opinions that many contracting patronage practices have been open, widespread, and unchallenged since the beginning of the Republic; and that those that have been objected to have not been objected to on constitutional grounds. That the Court thinks it relevant that many patronage practices are "covert, widely condemned and sometimes illegal" merely displays its persistent tendency to equate those many things that are or should be proscribed as a matter of social policy with those few things that we have the power to proscribe under the Constitution. The relevant and inescapable point is this: No court ever held,
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