He remembers Scalia fielding queries and discussing issues with students while flipping burgers on the grill at backyard parties, never shying away from a good debate. He was an amazing instructor; I learned much about contracts and life from this good man. Equally comfortable in the opera house and the duck blind, he pursued a remarkable range of avocational interests. And with nine children and dozens of grandchildren, family was never far from his mind. Duffy , writing in the National Review, remembered his own initial disappointment, while he clerked for Scalia, at his boss being assigned a relatively low-profile, technical case about Social Security benefits.
This is what lawyers and judges are trained to do, and Justice Scalia was masterly, and very happy, doing it. At a Feb. He loved the joy of being in there, wrestling with these issues. He loved the law. I remember the first time I met Justice Scalia. The library was empty, but then a man entered and started walking around.
Little did I know that I would be privileged to clerk for him several years later, and to know him for many more years after that. I wish everyone had the opportunity to know him as I and the other law clerks did.
He would have been all of these things even if he were not also a Supreme Court justice, and even if he were not possessed of one of the finest legal minds our country has ever known. His contributions to our shared profession are incalculable. He thought and cared so deeply about law, both in its theoretical dimensions and as a technical craft. He wanted — badly — to get it right, idea by idea, word by word. But as a person, he had a fundamental decency and a zest for living that pervaded his work and his interactions with others.
This was how he led his life. Clerking for the justice was exhilarating. This meant sitting with the justice for hours with every source cited in the opinion, which he personally reviewed. Scalia opinions are instantly recognizable in substance and tone, but what I will recall most was not any particular turn of phrase or opinion, but the careful process that led to them and how much the justice truly enjoyed working on them. He had many fond memories of teaching at the Law School.
Years later, he would hire Law School graduates as clerks pleased that the Law School continued to give out letter grades. One of the last times I saw the justice was on the occasion of the retirement of one of his long-time secretaries, Crystal Martin. As after-lunch entertainment, he had arranged for an opera singer from the Washington National Opera to be present.
What other boss, aside from The Boss, would do such a thing? In , he took a professorial position at the University of Virginia Law School and moved his family to Charlottesville. In , Scalia entered public service when President Richard Nixon appointed him general counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy, where he helped formulate regulations for the cable television industry. In this role, he testified before congressional committees on behalf of the Gerald Ford administration over executive privilege.
He later argued his first and only case before the U. Republic of Cuba on behalf of the U. Government and won the case. There he built a conservative record and won high praise in legal circles for his powerful and witty writing, often critical of the U.
Supreme Court he was bound to follow as a lower court judge. This drew the attention of Reagan administration officials, who put him on the short list for a Supreme Court nomination. Scalia was later confirmed Associate Justice of the U. As a Supreme Court Justice, Scalia was considered to be one of the more prominent legal thinkers of his generation.
It was also through his blunt some would say scathing dissents that he earned a reputation as combative and insulting. And yet to many who knew him personally, he was unpretentious, charming and funny. One of his closest friends on the Supreme Court was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , whose political views were vastly different from his own.
Justice Scalia adhered to the judicial philosophy of originalism, which holds that the Constitution should be interpreted in terms of what it theoretically meant to those who ratified it over two centuries ago. This was in direct conflict with the more commonly held view that the Constitution is a "living document," allowing courts to take into account the views of contemporary society.
In Justice Scalia's view, the Constitution was not supposed to facilitate change but to impede change to citizens' basic fundamental rights and responsibilities. Justice Scalia abhorred "judicial activism" and believed the place for implementing change was in the legislature, where the will of the people is represented. Critics say that such a legal interpretation is an impediment toward progress and point to many different examples of where the Constitution's founders held views repugnant to today's standards, such as racial and gender equality.
Justice Scalia's opponents stress that by interpreting the Constitution in its original form, any progressive law would be declared unconstitutional because it doesn't adhere to the original intent of the founders. For these reasons, Justice Scalia was oftentimes accused of allowing his personal views to influence his legal judgment.
In his quarter-century on the court, he became a political celebrity, especially with socially and politically conservative groups. He puzzled conservatives and pleased liberals by voting to uphold free speech, as in the Texas flag-burning case and striking down a prohibition on hate speech. In keeping with conservatives, he strove to limit the right to an abortion, rejecting the notion that his position was religiously motivated and stressing that the issue should be decided in the legislature.
He made no apology to the accusation that his role in the case of Bush v. Gore handed the election to George W. Bush , telling critics it was the right thing to do. He also confounded many Court observers by his recusal record, where he withdrew from cases whose topics would interest him, such as the Pledge of Allegiance case of Elk Grove v. But Justice Scalia refused to recuse himself in the case of Cheney v.
On June 25, , when the Supreme Court handed down a 6 to 3 majority decision in the case of King v. Burwell , upholding a key component of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Justice Scalia made headlines in voicing his dissent.
He added: "The Court's decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery. That philosophy ignores the American people's decision to give Congress '[a]ll legislative Powers' enumerated in the Constitution.
One day after the Supreme Court ruling on the health care law on June 26, , the highest court announced a landmark 5 to 4 ruling guaranteeing a right to same-sex marriage. Justice Scalia expressed his opinion that it was not the Supreme Court's role to decide same-sex marriage, and he wrote that the ruling was "at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our nation were built.
He reportedly died of natural causes, with later reports revealing that he had suffered from heart trouble and high blood pressure. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
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