U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has gone off the deep end.
Literally.
Speaking Tuesday to Chicago-Kent School of Law students, Scalia ruled definitively on the contentious matter of Chicago-style deep dish pizza versus New York-style thin crust pizza in favor of the latter.
“I do indeed like so-called ‘deep dish’ pizza,” Scalia conceded, “but it should not be called ‘pizza.’ It should be called a ‘tomato pie.’ Real pizza is Neapolitan [from Naples, Italy]. It is thin. It is chewy and crispy.”
Objection.
This is a landmark decision, by all accounts, and it’s one that’s largely consistent with the longest-serving justice’s originalist legal philosophy.
His particular brand of jurisprudence entails a strict and narrow constitutional interpretation. In his own words, Scalia’s predominant concern is a question: “What did the words mean to the people who ratified the Bill of Rights or who ratified the Constitution?”
As such, Scalia is often characterized as a traditionalist’s traditionalist, the intellectual anchor of the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, deeply embedded in the sands of conservatism’s seafloor, far beneath the tides of politics and opinion.
Scalia is in deep water for his unfathomable “tomato pie” opinion. I must dissent.
On Wednesday, an article in Chicagoist eloquently countered Scalia’s originalist interpretation, acknowledging pizza’s 19th-century Neapolitan origins but contending, quite persuasively, that the Neapolitans’ original intent in forming a more perfect union of tomatoes, cheese and dough “was to please the masses.”
I agree with the article’s conclusion that we must contextually respect this original intent in evaluating what is and isn’t pizza, or “pizzaness.”
In a way, such a conclusion is the culinary equivalent of the “Living Constitution” interpretation — pizza serves as a dynamic dish, and its accurate contemporary interpretation must incorporate modern palettes.
At any rate, if Chicago-style isn’t pizza, then New York-style isn’t, either. As any New Yorker will testify, NYC’s signature delicacy is invariably consumed only after it’s folded at its crust.
That’s a sandwich. A “tomato sandwich.”
Let’s proceed, then, from this culinary precedent, against Scalia’s opinion. It’s not form but content that constitutes pizzaness. Ingredients — dough, tomatoes and cheese — and not their assorted arrangements.
Granted, this precedent of content before form is loose constructivism par excellence, conferring pizzaness upon everything from Pizza Rolls and Bagel Bites to Hot Pockets and Pizza-licious Pringles. But here’s my litmus test.
The LSU Pizza Girl. Tell her that a pizza’s ingredients don’t matter — because I certainly wouldn’t dare.
As “Papa” John Schnatter noted, “Better ingredients. Better pizza.” It follows, then, that content and ingredients take precedence over form and crust.
I rest my case.
This is America, after all, the land of plenty, where culinary excellence is achieved through grease, staggering portions and 30-minute delivery guarantees.
Never mind its Neapolitan origins — Scalia is wrong. Pizza is incontrovertibly American, a dish with more cultural variations than there are states. It’s a deep dish precisely because it’s not just a deep dish.
Scalia’s interpretation, then, is not only authoritarian and anti-American.
It’s cheesy.
Phil Sweeney is a 25-year-old English senior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_PhilSweeney.
 
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Contact Phil Sweeney at [email protected]