Antonin Scalia

Antonin Gregory Scalia (March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016)Scalia repeatedly called upon his colleagues to strike down Roe v. Wade. Scalia hoped to find five votes to strike down Roe in the 1989 case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services but was not successful in doing so. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cast the deciding vote, allowing the abortion regulations at issue in the case to stand but not overruling Roe. Scalia concurred only in part, writing, "Justice O'Connor's assertion, that a 'fundamental rule of judicial restraint' requires us to avoid reconsidering Roe cannot be taken seriously". He noted, "We can now look forward to at least another Term of carts full of mail from the public, and the streets full of demonstrators".

The Court returned to the issue of abortion in the 2000 case of Stenberg v. Carhart, in which it invalidated a Nebraska statute outlawing partial-birth abortion. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the Court that the law was unconstitutional because it did not allow an exception for the health of the woman. Scalia dissented, comparing the Stenberg case to two of the most reviled cases in Supreme Court history: "I am optimistic enough to believe that, one day, Stenberg v. Carhart will be assigned its rightful place in the history of this Court's jurisprudence beside Korematsu and Dred Scott. The method of killing a human child ... proscribed by this statute is so horrible that the most clinical description of it evokes a shudder of revulsion".

In 2007, the Court upheld a federal statute banning partial-birth abortion in Gonzales v. Carhart. University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone, a former colleague of Scalia's, criticized Gonzales, stating that religion had influenced the outcome because all five justices in the majority were Catholic, whereas the dissenters were Protestant or Jewish. This angered Scalia to such an extent that he stated he would not speak at the University of Chicago as long as Stone was there.

Race, gender, and sexual orientation

Scalia generally voted to strike down laws that make distinctions by race, gender, or sexual orientation. In 1989, he concurred with the Court's judgment in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., in which the Court applied strict scrutiny to a city program requiring a certain percentage of contracts to go to minorities, and struck down the program. Scalia did not join the majority opinion, however. He disagreed with O'Connor's opinion for the Court, holding that states and localities could institute race-based programs if they identified past discrimination and if the programs were designed to remedy the past racism. Five years later, in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, he concurred in the Court's judgment and in part with the opinion that extended strict scrutiny to federal programs. Scalia noted in that matter his view that government can never have a compelling interest in making up for past discrimination by racial preferences:

In the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, involving racial preferences in the University of Michigan's law school, Scalia mocked the Court majority's finding that the school was entitled to continue using race as a factor in admissions to promote diversity and to increase "cross-racial understanding". Scalia noted:

thumb|Opening page of Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas

Scalia argued that laws that make distinctions between genders should be subjected to intermediate scrutiny, requiring that the gender classification be substantially related to important government objectives. When, in 1996, the Court upheld a suit brought by a woman who wished to enter the Virginia Military Institute in the case of United States v. Virginia, Scalia filed a lone, lengthy dissent. Scalia said that the Court, in requiring Virginia to show an "extremely persuasive justification" for the single-sex admission policy, had redefined intermediate scrutiny in such a way "that makes it indistinguishable from strict scrutiny".

In one of the final decisions of the Burger Court, the Court ruled in 1986 in Bowers v. Hardwick that "homosexual sodomy" was not protected by the right of privacy and could be criminally prosecuted by the states. In 1995, however, that ruling was effectively gutted by Romer v. Evans, which struck down a Colorado state constitutional amendment, passed by popular vote, that forbade antidiscrimination laws' being extended to sexual orientation. Scalia dissented from the opinion by Justice Kennedy, believing that Bowers had protected the right of the states to pass such measures and that the Colorado amendment was not discriminatory but merely prevented homosexuals from gaining favored status under Colorado law. Scalia later said of Romer, "And the Supreme Court said, 'Yes, it is unconstitutional.' On the basis of—I don't know, the Sexual Preference Clause of the Bill of Rights, presumably. And the liberals loved it, and the conservatives gnashed their teeth".

In 2003, Bowers was formally overruled by Lawrence v. Texas, from which Scalia dissented. According to Mark V. Tushnet in his survey of the Rehnquist Court, during the oral argument in the case, Scalia seemed so intent on making the state's argument for it that the Chief Justice intervened. According to his biographer, Joan Biskupic, Scalia "ridiculed" the majority in his dissent for being so ready to cast aside Bowers when many of the same justices had refused to overturn Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In March 2009, openly gay Congressman Barney Frank described him as a "homophobe". Maureen Dowd described Scalia in a 2003 column as "Archie Bunker in a high-backed chair". In an op-ed for The New York Times, federal appeals judge Richard Posner and Georgia State University law professor Eric Segall called Scalia's positions on homosexuality radical and characterized Scalia's "political ideal as verg[ing] on majoritarian theocracy". Former Scalia clerk Ed Whelan called this "a smear and a distraction." Professor John O. McGinnis responded as well, leading to further exchanges.

In the 2013 case of Hollingsworth v. Perry, which involved a California ballot initiative known as Proposition 8 that amended the California State Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Scalia voted with the majority to uphold a lower court decision overturning the ban. The decision was based on the appellants' lack of standing to appeal and not on the substantive issue of the constitutionality of Proposition 8.

Also in 2013, Scalia dissented from the majority opinion in United States v. Windsor. In Windsor, the Court held Section Three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (which—for federal government purposes—defined the terms "marriage" and "spouse" as applicable only to opposite-sex unions) unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Scalia's dissent, which was joined in full by Justice Thomas and in part by Chief Justice Roberts, opened:

Scalia argued that the judgment effectively characterized opponents of same-sex marriage as "enemies of the human race": He argued that the Court's ruling would affect state bans on same-sex marriage as well:

Scalia concluded by saying that the Supreme Court "has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat." Addressing the claimed Fourteenth Amendment violation, Scalia asserted that because a same-sex marriage ban would not have been considered unconstitutional at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption, such bans are not unconstitutional in 2015. He claimed there was "no basis" for the Court to strike down legislation that the Fourteenth Amendment did not expressly forbid, and directly attacked the majority opinion for "lacking even a thin veneer of law".

Criminal law

upright=1.15|thumb|alt=Scalia, wearing a beige jacket over shirt and tie, shakes hands with Jurij Toplak of European Election Law Association, while looking forward towards the camera.|right|Scalia (right) at [[Harvard Law School on November 30, 2006]]

Scalia believed the death penalty to be constitutional. He dissented in decisions that hold the death penalty unconstitutional as applied to certain groups, such as those who were under the age of 18 at the time of offense. In Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), he dissented from the Court's ruling that the death penalty could not be applied to those aged 15 at the time of the offense, and the following year authored the Court's opinion in Stanford v. Kentucky, sustaining the death penalty for those who killed at age 16. However, in 2005, the Court overturned Stanford in Roper v. Simmons, and Scalia again dissented, mocking the majority's claims that a national consensus had emerged against the execution of those who killed while underage, noting that less than half of the states that permitted the death penalty prohibited it for underage killers. He castigated the majority for including in their count states that had abolished the death penalty entirely, stating that doing so was "rather like including old-order Amishmen in a consumer-preference poll on the electric car. Of course they don't like it, but that sheds no light whatever on the point at issue". In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional as applied to intellectually disabled people. Scalia dissented, stating that it would not have been considered cruel or unusual to execute mildly intellectually disabled people at the time of the 1791 adoption of the Bill of Rights and that the Court had failed to show that a national consensus had formed against the practice.

Scalia strongly disfavored the Court's ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, which held that a confession by an arrested suspect who had not been advised of their rights was inadmissible in court, and he voted to overrule Miranda in the 2000 case of Dickerson v. United States but was in a minority of two with Justice Clarence Thomas. Calling the Miranda decision a "milestone of judicial overreaching", Scalia stated that the Court should not fear to correct its mistakes.

Although, in many areas, Scalia's approach was unfavorable to criminal defendants, he took the side of defendants in matters involving the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees defendants the right to confront their accusers. In multiple cases, Scalia wrote against laws that allowed alleged victims of child abuse to testify behind screens or by closed-circuit television. In a 2009 case, Scalia wrote the majority opinion in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, holding that defendants must have the opportunity to confront lab technicians in drug cases and that a certificate of analysis is not enough to prove a substance was a drug.

Scalia maintained that every element of an offense that helps determine the sentence must be either admitted by the defendant or found by a jury under the Sixth Amendment's jury guarantee. In the 2000 case of Apprendi v. New Jersey, Scalia wrote a concurrence to the Court's majority opinion that struck down a state statute that allowed the trial judge to increase the sentence if the judge found the offense was a hate crime. Scalia found the procedure impermissible because whether it was a hate crime had not been decided by the jury.

In the 2001 case of Kyllo v. United States, Scalia wrote the Court's opinion in a 5–4 decision that cut across ideological lines. That decision found thermal imaging of a home to be an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment. The Court struck down a conviction for marijuana manufacture based on a search warrant issued after such scans were conducted, which showed that the garage was considerably hotter than the rest of the house because of indoor growing lights. Applying that Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure to arrest, Scalia dissented from the Court's 1991 decision in County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, allowing a 48-hour delay before a person arrested without a warrant is taken before a magistrate, on the ground that at the time of the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, an arrested person was to be taken before a magistrate as quickly as practicable. In a 1990 First Amendment case, R.A.V. v. St. Paul, Scalia wrote the Court's opinion striking down a St. Paul, Minnesota, hate speech ordinance in a prosecution for burning a cross. Scalia noted, "Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone's front yard is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire".

Second Amendment

In 2008, the Court considered a challenge to the gun laws in the District of Columbia. Scalia wrote the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which found an individual right to own a firearm under the Second Amendment. Scalia traced the word "militia", found in the Second Amendment, as it would have been understood at the time of its ratification, stating that it then meant "the body of all citizens". Seventh Circuit judge Richard Posner disagreed with Scalia's opinion, stating that the Second Amendment "creates no right to the private possession of guns". Posner called Scalia's opinion "faux originalism" and a "historicizing glaze on personal values and policy preferences". In October 2008, Scalia stated that the court's originalists needed to show only that at the time the Second Amendment was ratified, the right to bear arms did not have an exclusively military context and that they were successful in so showing.

Litigation and standing

Following the death of Scalia, Paul Barrett, writing for Bloomberg Businessweek, reported that: "Translating into liberal argot: Scalia changed the rules for who could sue". The issue elevated the recognition of Scalia as a notable influence on establishing and determining the conditions under which cases could be brought to trial and for litigation—and by whom such litigation could take place. David Rivkin, from the conservative standpoint, said, "He (Scalia) did more to clarify and limit the bounds and scope of judicial power than any Supreme Court Justice in history, particularly in the area of standing and class actions". Scalia indicated his long-held position from the time of his 1983 law review article titled "The Doctrine of Standing as an Essential Element of the Separation of Powers". As summarized by Barrett, "He (Scalia) wrote that courts had misappropriated authority from other branches of government by allowing too many people to sue corporations and government agencies, especially in environmental cases". In a practical sense, Scalia brought to the attention of the Court the authority to restrict "standing" in class action suits in which the litigants may be defined in descriptive terms rather than as well-defined and unambiguous litigants.

Other cases

Scalia concurred in the 1990 case of Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, in which the family of a woman in a vegetative state sought to have her feeding tube removed so she would die, believing that to have been her wish. The Court found for the State of Missouri, requiring clear and convincing evidence of such a desire. Scalia stated that the Court should have remained away from the dispute and that the issues "are <nowiki>[not]</nowiki> better known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory".

Scalia joined the majority per curiam opinion in the 2000 case of Bush v. Gore, which effectively ended recounts of ballots in Florida following the 2000 US presidential election, and also both concurred separately and joined Rehnquist's concurrence. In 2007, he said of the case, "I and my court owe no apology whatever for Bush v. Gore. We did the right thing. So there! ... get over it. It's so old by now". During an interview on the Charlie Rose show, he defended the Court's action:

Legal philosophy and approach

Judicial performance

thumb|right|Scalia in 2010During oral argument before the Court, Scalia asked more questions and made more comments than any other justice. A 2005 study found that he provoked laughter more often than any of his colleagues did. His goal during oral arguments was to get across his position to the other justices. University of Kansas social psychologist Lawrence Wrightsman wrote that Scalia communicated "a sense of urgency on the bench" and had a style that was "forever forceful".

Scalia wrote numerous opinions from the start of his career on the Supreme Court. During his tenure, he wrote more concurring opinions than any other justice. Only two other justices have written more dissents. According to Kevin Ring, who compiled a book of Scalia's dissenting and concurring opinions: "His opinions are ... highly readable. His entertaining writing style can make even the most mundane areas of the law interesting". Conor Clarke of Slate comments on Scalia's written opinions, especially his dissents:

thumb|Scalia speaks at the US mission within [[Geneva in 2011.]]At the Supreme Court, justices meet after the case is briefed and argued and vote on the result. The task of writing the opinion is assigned by the Chief Justice or—if the Chief Justice is in the minority or is not participating—by the senior justice in the majority. After the assignment, the justices generally communicate about a case by sending notes and draft opinions to each other's chambers. In the give-and-take of opinion-writing, Scalia did not compromise his views in order to attract five votes for a majority (unlike the late Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., who would accept less than what he wanted in order to gain a partial victory). Scalia attempted to influence his colleagues by sending them "Ninograms"—short memoranda aimed at persuading them of the correctness of his views.

In an October 2013 issue of New York magazine, Scalia revealed that he scanned The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times, obtained most of his news from talk radio, and did not read The New York Times or The Washington Post. He described The Washington Post as "shrilly liberal".

Textualism

Scalia was a textualist in statutory interpretation, believing that the ordinary meaning of a statute should govern. In interpreting statutes, Scalia did not look to legislative history. In the 2006 case of Zedner v. United States, he joined the majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito—all except one paragraph of the opinion, in which Alito cited legislative history. In a concurring opinion in that case, Scalia noted, "The use of legislative history is illegitimate and ill advised in the interpretation of any statute".

His dislike of legislative history may have been a reason that other justices have become more cautious in its use.

Originalism

thumb|Scalia's official Supreme Court portrait by [[Nelson Shanks]]

In 1998, Scalia vociferously opposed the idea of a living constitution, or the power of the judiciary to modify the meaning of constitutional provisions to adapt them to changing times. He compared the Constitution to statutes he contended were not understood to change their meaning through time. Scalia was often asked how that approach justified the result in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, which held that segregated schools were unconstitutional and which relied on the Fourteenth Amendment for the result. Scalia responded to this argument in two ways. He noted research by Michael McConell that "persuasively establishes that this was the original understanding of the post Civil War Amendments." However, Scalia continues by arguing that even if non-originalist methods occasionally produce better results than originalism, "It is in no way remarkable... that taking power from the people and placing it instead with a judicial aristocracy can produce some creditable results that democracy might not achieve. The same can be said of monarchy and totalitarianism. But once a nation has decided that democracy... is the best system of government, the crucial question becomes which theory of textual interpretation is compatible with democracy. Originalism unquestionably is. Non-originalism, by contrast, imposes on society statutory prescriptions that were never democratically adopted. When applied to the Constitution, nonoriginalism limits the democratic process itself, prohibiting... acts... that 'We The People' never, ever, voted to outlaw". In a 2009 public conversation, Justice Stephen Breyer questioned Scalia, indicating that those who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend to end school segregation. Scalia called this argument "waving the bloody shirt of Brown" and indicated that he would have joined the first Justice Harlan's solitary dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 case that Brown overruled.

Scalia's originalist approach came under attack from critics, who viewed it as "a cover for what they see as Scalia's real intention: to turn back some pivotal court decisions of the 1960s and 70s" reached by the Warren and Burger Courts. Nader's view preceded the Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Scalia, in his concurrence in that case, traced his understanding of the rights of groups of individuals at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights. His argument was based on the lack of an exception for groups such as corporations in the free speech guarantee in the Bill of Rights and on several examples of corporate political speech from the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Professor Thomas Colby of George Washington University National Law Center argued that Scalia's votes in Establishment Clause cases do not stem from originalist views but simply from conservative political convictions. Scalia responded to his critics that his originalism "has occasionally led him to decisions he deplores, like his upholding the constitutionality of flag burning", which according to Scalia was protected by the First Amendment.

Public attention

Requests for recusals

thumb|left|alt=Two men in shirtsleeves work at a table, there are quantities of paper in front of them..|Scalia (right) works on a book with lexicographer [[Bryan A. Garner.]]

Scalia recused himself from Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2004), a case brought by atheist Michael Newdow alleging that recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance (including the words "under God") in school classrooms violated the rights of his daughter, who he said was also an atheist. Shortly after the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Newdow's favor but before the case came before the Supreme Court, Scalia spoke at a Knights of Columbus event in Fredericksburg, Virginia, stating that the Ninth Circuit decision was an example of how the courts were trying to excise God from public life. The school district requested that the Supreme Court review the case, and Newdow asked that Scalia recuse himself because of this prior statement, which he did without comment.

Scalia declined to recuse himself from Cheney v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia (2005), a case concerning whether Vice President Dick Cheney could keep secret the membership of an advisory task force on energy policy. Scalia was asked to recuse himself because he had gone on a hunting trip with various persons including Cheney, during which he traveled one way on Air Force Two. Scalia issued a lengthy in-chambers opinion refusing to recuse himself, stating that though Cheney was a longtime friend, he was being sued merely in his official capacity and that were justices to step aside in the cases of officials who are parties because of official capacity, the Supreme Court would cease to function. Scalia indicated that it was far from unusual for justices to socialize with other government officials, recalling that the late Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson played poker with President Harry Truman and that Justice Byron White went skiing with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Scalia stated that he was never alone with Cheney during the trip, the two had not discussed the case, and the justice had saved no money because he had bought round-trip tickets, the cheapest available. Scalia was part of the 7–2 majority once the case was heard, a decision that generally upheld Cheney's position. Scalia later described his refusal to recuse himself as his "most heroic opinion" because it had exposed him to a great deal of criticism.

Judge Gilbert S. Merritt Jr. of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals called for Scalia's recusal in Bush v. Gore at the time. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, writing in Law and Philosophy, later chronicled such calls and contended that "There were many ways for Justice Scalia's sons to benefit from a decision in favor of Bush. Together these benefits could be substantial. Hence, [the law] required recusal". Republicans dismissed such calls as partisan, noting that Merritt was a close friend of the Gores and a rumored Gore Supreme Court nominee. and one celebrating the Latin version of the Mass of Paul VI at St. Catherine of Siena in Great Falls, Virginia. In a 2013 interview with Jennifer Senior for New York, Scalia was asked whether his beliefs extended to the Devil, and he stated, "Of course! Yeah, he's a real person. Hey, c'mon, that's standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that." When asked whether he had seen recent evidence of the Devil, Scalia replied: "You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He's making pigs run off cliffs, he's possessing people and whatnot ... What he's doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He's much more successful that way."

In 2006, upon leaving church, Scalia was asked by a reporter whether being a traditionalist Catholic had caused problems for him, and he responded by asking, "You know what I say to those people?" and with a gesture, cupping his hand under his chin and flicking his fingers out. The gesture, which got captured by a photographer, was initially reported by the Boston Herald as obscene. Scalia responded to the reports with a letter to the editor, accusing the news staff of watching too many episodes of The Sopranos and stating that the gesture was a strong brush-off. Roger Axtell, an expert on body language, described the gesture as possibly meaning "I've had enough, go away" and noted, "It's a fairly strong gesture". The gesture was parodied by comedian Stephen Colbert during his performance at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner later that year, with the justice in attendance; cameras showed that, unlike most of the butts of Colbert's jokes that evening, Scalia was laughing.

1996 presidential election

According to John Boehner, as chairman of the House Republican Conference, he sought to persuade Scalia to run for election as vice president with Bob Dole in 1996. As related by Boehner, Scalia listened to the proposal and dictated the same reply Justice Charles Evans Hughes had once given to a similar query: "The possibility is too remote to comment upon, given my position". Dole did put Scalia on his list of potential running mates but eventually decided upon Jack Kemp.

Personal life

thumb|Scalia (left) and [[William Barr (right) at the swearing-in of his son, Eugene Scalia, as Solicitor of Labor on February 25, 2002]]

On September 10, 1960, Scalia married Maureen McCarthy at St. Pius X church in Yarmouth, Massachusetts. Paul Scalia became a Catholic priest, Matthew Scalia had a military career, and Christopher Scalia became a writer. All four Scalia daughters—Catherine, Ann, Margaret, and Mary—have families. According to Scalia, Maureen raised all nine children "with very little assistance from me". The family resided in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Scalia enjoyed a warm friendship with fellow justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, considered a member of the court's liberal wing, with the two attending the opera together and appearing together onstage as supernumeraries in Washington National Opera's 1994 production of Ariadne auf Naxos. An avid hunter, Scalia taught Justice Kagan how to hunt; the two hunted ducks, birds, deer and antelope together.

Death and funeral

thumb|Scalia's gravesite at [[Fairfax Memorial Park]]

Scalia died in his sleep at age 79. His body was discovered on the morning of February 13, 2016, in his room at Cibolo Creek Ranch, near Shafter, Texas in Presidio County, Texas. He had gone quail hunting the afternoon before, and then dined as the guest of John B. Poindexter, owner of the ranch. After Poindexter discovered the body, he called the Presidio County sheriff's department to ask for the number of the U.S. Marshals Service to report a death. Poindexter was reluctant to say who had died to Sheriff Danny Dominguez. Dominguez had the Marshal's Service call the ranch owner, and both the marshals and the sheriff went to the ranch, where they were shown Scalia's body. Dominguez instructed his office to call local justice of the peace Juanita Bishop, but she was out of town.

County judge Cinderela Guevara pronounced Scalia dead of natural causes. She did not see the body, which under Texas law is not required, nor did she order an autopsy. Scalia's physician, Rear Admiral Brian P. Monahan, told her Scalia had a history of heart trouble, including high blood pressure, and was recently deemed too weak to undergo surgery for a torn rotator cuff. According to Sunset Funeral Home director Chris Lujan, Scalia's family also declined to have an autopsy performed after his body was transferred to his El Paso funeral home, prior to its return to Fairfax, Virginia.

Justice Scalia's last majority opinion was Kansas v. Carr (2016), and his last dissenting opinion and last overall was FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association (2016). Following his death, Scalia lay in repose in the Great Hall of the United States Supreme Court Building on February 19, 2016. Scalia's son, Father Paul Scalia, celebrated a Catholic funeral Mass and delivered the homily on February 20, 2016, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. The Obama administration was represented at the funeral by Vice President Joe Biden; President Barack Obama did not attend. Scalia's remains were interred at a private ceremony at Fairfax Memorial Park in Fairfax, Virginia.

Conspiracy theories

The circumstances surrounding Scalia's death prompted conspiracy theories alleging that he may have been murdered. The conspiracy theory was promoted by William Ritchie, a former head of criminal investigations for the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, and by Alex Jones, a far-right talk show host. Donald Trump, then a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, referenced the homicide allegations on Michael Savage's radio show The Savage Nation, saying that "they say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow." Eugene Scalia rejected the theories, saying that "our family just has no doubt that he was taken from us by natural causes."

Legacy

thumb|upright=1.35|The Roberts Court (October 2010 – February 2016). Front row: [[Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, John Roberts (Chief), Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Back row: Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan.]]

Influence

Writing in The Jewish Daily Forward in 2009, J. J. Goldberg described Scalia as "the intellectual anchor of the court's conservative majority". Scalia traveled to the nation's law schools, giving talks on law and democracy. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg indicated that Scalia was "very much in tune with the current generation of law students ... Students now put 'Federalist Society' on their resumes". John Paul Stevens, who served throughout Scalia's tenure until his 2010 retirement, said of Scalia's influence, "He's made a huge difference. Some of it constructive, some of it unfortunate".

Writing in the American Spectator, Adam Carrington noted that:

thumb|Scalia accepts the Semper Fidelis Award, 2013

Scalia's promotion of textualism and originalism on the high court led to a shift in the American judiciary's approach to textual interpretation, with greater attention paid to the text itself. The liberal political philosopher Ronald Dworkin said that because of Scalia, "we are all originalists now." For this reason, he is often described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century. Kagan echoed the comment in her 2010 confirmation hearing, and declared in a 2015 interview at Harvard Law School honoring her then-colleague Scalia that "we are all textualists now." In 2017, Harvard University established an endowed professorship at its law school dedicated in honor of Scalia; as of July 1, 2021, it is occupied by Stephen E. Sachs.

In popular culture

Derrick Wang's opera Scalia/Ginsburg depicts the friendship of Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both known for their shared love of opera. The opera was introduced before Scalia and Ginsburg at the Supreme Court in 2013, premiered at the Castleton Festival in 2015, and was revised after Scalia's death, with the revised version broadcast on national radio on November 7, 2020. Scalia and Ginsburg both wrote forewords to the libretto, and Ginsburg cited the opera in her statement on Scalia's death and in her foreword to the book Scalia Speaks.

John Strand's play The Originalist was performed in Washington, DC in 2015; it received a positive review from The New York Times. The play depicted Justice Scalia's interaction with a (fictional) liberal court clerk and their mutual criticism and eventual support of each other. The play had a cross-country tour from Washington, D.C. to the Pasadena Playhouse. The play aired on PBS in 2017.

Posthumous tributes

According to NBC News, tributes to "larger-than-life Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia poured in [from] both sides of the political aisle" following his death. President Barack Obama called Scalia "one of the towering legal figures of our time" and former president George W. Bush described Scalia as "a brilliant jurist". The dedication ceremony occurred on October 6, 2016, and was attended by Supreme Court justices. At the ceremony, Justice Elena Kagan called Scalia "one of the most important Supreme Court justices ever, and also one of the greatest".

In October 2016, the Italy–USA Foundation posthumously awarded Scalia its America Award. The ceremony was conducted in front of the Italian parliament in Rome.

In 2018, President Donald Trump posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Scalia.

Writing for the plurality in Borden v. United States, Justice Kagan referenced Scalia, writing "Indeed, the Court has made a similar point before, in an opinion by one of its great wordsmiths."

In a concurring opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Justice Neil Gorsuch praised Scalia for his willingness to reconsider his earlier views, writing that "rather than cling to the pride of personal precedent, the Justice began to express doubts over the very project that he had worked to build... If Chevron's ascent is a testament to the Justice's ingenuity, its demise is an even greater tribute to his humility"

Succession

thumb|[[Merrick Garland with Barack Obama following the announcement that he is Obama's nominee to succeed Scalia (March 16, 2016)]]

thumb|President Donald Trump announcing Tenth Circuit judge Neil Gorsuch as his nominee to succeed Scalia

Scalia's death—only the second death of a serving justice in the previous 60 years—left eight justices remaining on the Supreme Court, split 4–4 between fairly conservative and fairly liberal, during a presidential election year. Cases that were pending before the Court at Scalia's death were decided by the remaining eight members. A 4–4 deadlock would result in the ruling of the lower court being upheld, but no precedent being set, and the justices would not publish written opinions on the merits of the case.

In a 2012 interview, Scalia had said he would prefer Judge Frank Easterbrook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit as his successor. On March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to fill Scalia's seat, but the Republican-controlled Senate declined to take any action on the nomination; the nomination expired with the end of the 114th Congress on January 3, 2017. On January 31, 2017, Republican President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to succeed Scalia. Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate on April 7, 2017.

Selected works

Books

Articles

Footnotes

References

Scholarly sources

Details.

External links

Issue positions and quotes at OnTheIssues
Supreme Court Associate Justice Nomination Hearings on Antonin Gregory Scalia in August 1986 United States Government Publishing Office