With less than two weeks before the start of the new Supreme Court session, Justice Antonin Scalia is still lamenting Obergefell v. Hodges, the June ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
At a Tuesday speech at Rhodes College, which his grandson attends, the justice blasted the decision, calling it the "furthest imaginable extension of the Supreme Court doing whatever it wants," according to The Associated Press.
Scalia dissented in the case, accusing the court of being a "threat to democracy" and the justices who ruled for a constitutional right to marriage for gay couples the "Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast."
The speech at Rhodes seemed to signal that his dismay over gay marriage continues.
"Saying that the Constitution requires that practice, which is contrary to the religious beliefs of many of our citizens," Scalia said, "I don't know how you can get more extreme than that."
He added, "I worry about a court that's headed in that direction."
The speech came as part of the college's observance of Constitution Day, a statutory initiative schools use for educational programs and civics lessons on citizenship and the Constitution.
But rather than celebrate the founding document, Scalia appeared to decry its destruction by his colleagues on the court.
"Do you really want your judges to rewrite the Constitution?" he pondered. He bemoaned that the court was made up of no more than "lawyers" who are "terribly unrepresentative of our country," according to the Commercial Appeal, a Memphis-based news outlet.
Scalia said there was nothing in his legal education at one of America's top law schools that makes him especially qualified to decide some of the hotly debated issues that reach the court.
"What is it that I learned at Harvard Law School that makes me peculiarly qualified to determine such profound moral and ethical questions as whether there should be a right to abortion, whether there should be same-sex marriage, whether there should be a right to suicide?" he asked, according to the AP. "It has nothing to do with the law. Even Yale Law School doesn't teach that stuff."
Scalia also used the speech and a question-and-answer session with students to address controversial subjects such as the death penalty and U.S. drone strikes against Americans in the Middle East.
Scalia didn't seem to have a problem with the latter issue.
"I think, if that person has taken up arms against the United States, what's the difference between allowing our soldiers to shoot him dead and allowing a drone to kill him?" he said.
The Supreme Court's next session kicks off Oct. 5.