Just to clarify, there were other dissents in Arizona v. US, but the only one that was bonkers was Scalia's. The other dissents (Thomas, and Alito's partial di

Just to clarify, there were other dissents in Arizona v. US, but the only one that was bonkers was Scalia's. The other dissents (Thomas, and Alito's partial dissent) thought the AZ immigration laws were similar enough to the federal law to survive pre-emption. Scalia thought the state had inherent rights as a separate sovereign to keep out non-citizens it didn't want there. It wasn't perfectly clear why Scalia didn't think Arizona could keep out foreign tourists if they wanted (though he did assert that the state would have to respect federal visas). I even knew people who usually agreed with Scalia who thought that opinion was "radical."