Antonin Scalia

US Supreme Court justice

• Born: March 11, 1936
• Birthplace: Trenton, New Jersey
• Died: February 13, 2016
• Place of death: Shafter, Texas

Perhaps one of the most controversial justices to serve on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia was considered by supporters to be a staunch defender of the US Constitution, while critics derided him for not taking into account the need for compassion in contemporary society. A staunch opponent of judicial activism, his conservative view called for a limited role for the court in deference to the executive and legislative branches of government.

His 1986 appointment to the court by President Ronald Reagan made Scalia the first Italian-American member of the Supreme Court, and he quickly became one of the most influential justices of his era.

Background and Education

Antonin Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey. Both of his parents worked as teachers, and his father emigrated from Sicily at a young age while his mother was born to Italian immigrant parents. Scalia moved to Queens, New York, in 1941 after his father took a position as a Romance language professor at Brooklyn College. He attended public schools until his enrollment in Manhattan's St. Francis Xavier prep school.

In 1957, Scalia earned a degree in history from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, with additional studies at University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In 1960, he earned a Juris doctorate legal degree from Harvard Law School in Boston, where he also worked as an editor for the Harvard Law Review. Following his graduation, he was awarded a Sheldon fellowship for one year of additional study abroad.

Early Career

Scalia married Radcliffe College alumnus Maureen McCarthy in 1960. They had nine children. In 1961, he entered private law practice with Cleveland, Ohio, corporate law firm Jones, Day, Cockley, and Reavis.

The young Scalia family moved again in 1967, after he accepted a post as a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, located about two hours from the Washington, DC, area, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Nixon, Ford Administrations

In 1971, Scalia joined the Richard Nixon administration as general counsel. He worked in the Office of Telecommunications Policy, created by Nixon in 1970 to give the White House greater control of the American media. Scalia helped to develop new policies dealing with the regulation of the fledgling cable television industry in the United States.

In 1972, he became the chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency chartered to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of federal programs.

In 1974, Scalia became embroiled in the Watergate scandal that befell the Nixon White House. He was nominated by Nixon to be assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel. When Nixon resigned later that year, the question of legal ownership of Nixon's documents and his previously secret tape recordings fell to Scalia to determine. His opinion was in favor of executive privilege, which allowed Nixon to maintain control of the materials. While Scalia admitted that Nixon had trampled over the attorney general's office and the special prosecutor, he argued that Nixon still deserved constitutional protection. Scalia's ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court, but it would mark his strong support of textualism—a term meaning application of the law based on a literal reading of constitutional protections.

Scalia continued to work in the DOJ under President Gerald Ford until Jimmy Carter became president in 1977. He then worked for a brief time in Washington, DC, at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, and at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Chicago and the Visiting Professor

Later in 1977, Scalia moved to Chicago, Illinois, to take a position as a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where he would teach until 1982. During this period, he also traveled to Georgetown University and Stanford Law School as a visiting professor, and he was on the board of visitors for Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School. He was also an editor at Regulation Magazine, a policy publication of the libertarian Cato Institute, specializing in critical analysis of the implications of government regulations. He was also active in the American Bar Association (ABA) during this time, chairing the Section of Administrative Law as well as the ABA Conference of Section Chairmen.

Bringing to bear his interest in government regulation, Scalia in 1978 wrote an analysis of the Supreme Court decision on Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, and the role of the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946 in abetting the complexity of governmental regulations.

The US Court of Appeals

The year after President Reagan brought the executive branch back under Republican control he nominated Scalia for appointment to the US Court of Appeals. His nomination was approved in August 1982. During Scalia's four years on the court, he would continue to develop his argument for limited power of the court system, particularly in deference to the executive branch. For example, he wrote an opinion that the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act that set budget limits enforceable by US comptroller general was an unlawful breach of executive branch authority. The opinion was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court

After Justice Warren Burger retired in 1986, President Reagan appointed William H. Rehnquist as the next chief justice, and called on Scalia to fill Rehnquist's seat. His September confirmation hearing before the Senate was uneventful and the nomination was approved unanimously, reflecting the general consensus of the time that the president's nominees were expected to be approved. In many ways Scalia's appointment was also overshadowed by the hearings on the promotion of fellow conservative Rehnquist to the powerful chief justice seat.

As expected, Scalia often aligned with fellow conservatives Rehnquist and, after his 1991 confirmation, Justice Clarence Thomas. Among other conservative opinions, he opposed affirmative action and made it clear that he believed the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision granting abortion rights under constitutional law should be overturned. However, Scalia's literal reading of the constitution did lead him to support such controversial issues as flag burning, as when he agreed with the majority in the 1989 Supreme Court ruling that the act of flag burning is protected under the First Amendment. He also unsuccessfully opposed drug testing of employees as a violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. In the 1990 Maryland v. Craig case that found in favor of allowing closed-circuit trial testimony, Scalia again dissented on the grounds that such action violated Sixth Amendment protections of the rights of the accused.

On the conservative tack, Scalia did rule against constitutional protection for the religious use of hallucinogenic drugs in the 1990 Oregon v. Smith case. He was also the lone dissenter in a case that ruled the Virginia Military Institute would have to admit women. He also consistently argued against any reading of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment as an argument against the death penalty. Scalia joined Rehnquist's majority in the Bush v. Gore (2000) decision that ended presidential ballot recounts in Florida and sparked strong partisan debate. He authored the majority ruling in the case District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), which upheld the individual right to own firearms and was widely seen as a major conservative victory. Scalia presented a vehement dissent of the case United States v. Windsor in 2013. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional and that the federal government had to recognize same-sex marriages conducted in states where it was legal. Scalia believed that the court did not logically justify the unconstitutionality of DOMA, meaning that the decision would then have to be made as to whether state laws banning gay marriage were also unconstitutional.

In 2014, controversy erupted when longtime death row inmate Henry Lee McCollum was officially exonerated of murder due to DNA evidence. Scalia, consistently a supporter of the constitutionality of the death penalty, had once cited McCollum's case as a clear example of the necessity of the death penalty. That same year, the Senate released a report on the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture during the George W. Bush administration. During the debate surrounding this document, Scalia spoke out to explain his view on when torture would be considered constitutional. Known for the often emotional, unrestrained tone of his opinions, he generated further controversy with his dissent in King v. Burwell (2015), a case that upheld provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare). Scalia ridiculed the ruling and suggested that the court itself wielded too much power outside a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Personal Life and Death

Although some analysts speculated that Scalia’s good rapport with President Bush might result in his being appointed chief justice following the death of Rehnquist in 2005, it did not play out that way. Nonetheless, many agreed that the naming of John Roberts to the position of chief justice gave Scalia a like-minded conservative colleague.

Scalia, called "Nino" by his friends, was known to be very social outside of the court. He played the piano, loved the opera and singing, and liked to go hunting and play poker. He was a practicing traditional Roman Catholic but vehemently denied frequent allegations that his religious views influenced his opinions as a justice in any way. In 2014, Simon & Schuster released a biography of the associate justice titled Scalia: A Court of One.

On February 13, 2016, Scalia was found dead while on vacation at a West Texas resort, where he had been hunting. He was seventy-nine years old and had reportedly been experiencing health issues, but his death came as a surprise and immediately threw the Court into turmoil regarding his successor.

Bibliography

"Antonin Scalia." Oyez, Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech, 2016, www.oyez.org/justices/antonin‗scalia. Accessed 15 Feb. 2016.

Kelley, William K. "Justice Antonin Scalia and the Long Game." George Washington Law Review Arguendo, vol. 80, no. 6, 2012, pp. 1601–09.

Liptak, Adam. "Antonin Scalia, Justice on the Supreme Court, Dies at 79." The New York Times, 13 Feb. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/antonin-scalia-death.html. Accessed 15 Feb. 2016.

Murphy, Bruce Allen. Scalia: A Court of One. Simon, 2014.

Segall, Eric J. "The Constitution according to Justices Scalia and Thomas: Alive and Kickin'.'" Washington University Law Review, vol. 91, no. 6, 2014, pp. 1663–72.