![]() Only the executive branch could conduct criminal investigations, he argued. Writing alone in one of his finest dissents, Scalia inveigled against the Court’s attack on separation of powers. Olson, a 7-1 majority upheld the constitutionality of the Independent Counsel Act, which established an independent prosecutor outside of the Justice Department to investigate government officials. ![]() Reading an Antonin Scalia opinion with which you agreed was like uncorking champagne. On the Court, he soon carved out a reputation for vivid, pugilistic writing. Senate breezily confirmed him, in an era before raucous confirmation hearings and partisan votes for the justices, 98-0. Circuit, a common stepping stone to the Court. To fill Rehnquist’s old seat, Reagan plucked Scalia from his posting on the D.C. When Burger retired in 1986, President Ronald Reagan elevated Justice William Rehnquist to the top spot on the Court. Scalia joined the Supreme Court at the tail end of a major ideological transition in the late-20th century, as the justices from the heady liberal era of the Warren Court retired and gave way to an increasingly conservative bench under Chief Justice Warren Burger in the 1970s and 1980s. After Scalia spent a spell back in private practice and teaching during the Carter years, Ronald Reagan appointed him to the D.C. From there, he entered private practice and then taught law at the University of Virginia before serving in the Ford administration’s Justice Department. Raised in a staunchly Catholic family, Scalia attended Georgetown University and then Harvard Law School. And his fiery dissents made him a household name, as loved by conservatives as he was loathed by liberals.Īntonin Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on March 11, 1936, to an Italian immigrant father and a mother whose parents also immigrated from Italy. Scalia often remarked that he wrote his opinions so that first-year law students would want to read them. His majority opinions aimed for an accessible, easy-to-read tone, with occasional interjections of wit. He considered each of his colleagues to be his friends, especially Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose famously warm friendship with him was recently portrayed in opera. His aggressive questioning hastened the transformation of oral arguments into a lively exercise between the justices and the advocates. The most colorful justice in living memory, Scalia relished his role on the Court. And it really wasn’t 20 years ago, it was not even worth talking about in serious academic circles.” He rightly claimed a large share of the credit for himself. “What it means is that at least originalism is now regarded as a respectable approach to constitutional interpretation. Elena Kagan did that, and the reason she did it is that you want to have on your faculty representatives of all responsible points of view,” he said in a 2013 interview with Jennifer Senior. But Scalia’s enthusiasm helped the school of legal thought enter the mainstream, with law schools such as Harvard eventually hiring professors who favor it. “You could fire a grapefruit out of a cannon over the best law schools in the country-and that includes Chicago-and not hit an originalist,” he told a group of University of Chicago law students in 2003. Its adherents also initially found little room in the academy. Only he and Clarence Thomas championed originalism on the Supreme Court for most of his tenure, limiting the doctrine’s impact. Go back to the good, old dead Constitution,’” he told NPR in 2008. He rejected the idea of an evolving “living Constitution,” claimed by some of his colleagues. ![]() The Constitution should be read as the Founders wrote it, he often argued, and laws should be interpreted as they are written. ![]() Scalia articulated a straightforward role for jurists during his 29-year career on the Court. “He will no doubt be remembered as one of the most consequential judges to serve on the Supreme Court,” he said. President Obama, who will have the opportunity to nominate Scalia’s successor, offered his sympathies to the justice’s family on Saturday night. His passing is a great loss to the Court and the country he so loyally served,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement on behalf of the Court. “He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues. Supreme Court’s conservative wing during his three-decade tenure as a justice, died Saturday at a ranch in western Texas. Antonin Scalia, the judicial firebrand who stood as the intellectual leader of the U.S.
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