Antonin Scalia
Antonin Gregory Scalia (/ˌæntənɪn skəˈliːə/ ; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016)[1][n 1] was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century,[8] and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court.[9] Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor.
"Scalia" redirects here. For the surname, see Scalia (surname).
Antonin Scalia
Ronald Reagan
Robert Anthony
February 13, 2016 (aged 79)
Shafter, Texas, U.S.
9, including Eugene
- Francis Boyer Award (1989)
- Scribes Lifetime-Achievement Award (2008)
- Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumous, 2018)
Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey. A devout Catholic, he attended the Jesuit Xavier High School before receiving his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. Scalia went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and spent six years at Jones Day before becoming a law professor at the University of Virginia. In the early 1970s, he served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, eventually becoming an Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald Ford. He spent most of the Carter years teaching at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the first faculty advisers of the fledgling Federalist Society. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Scalia as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Four years later, Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court, where Scalia became its first Italian-American justice following a unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate 98–0.[n 2]
Scalia espoused a conservative jurisprudence and ideology, advocating textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation. He peppered his colleagues with "Ninograms" (memos named for his nickname, "Nino") intending to persuade them to his point of view. He was a strong defender of the powers of the executive branch and believed that the U.S. Constitution permitted the death penalty and did not guarantee the right to either abortion or same-sex marriage. Furthermore, Scalia viewed affirmative action and other policies that afforded special protected status to minority groups as unconstitutional. Such positions would earn him a reputation as one of the most conservative justices on the Court. He filed separate opinions in many cases, often castigating the Court's majority—sometimes scathingly so.
Scalia's most significant opinions include his lone dissent in Morrison v. Olson (arguing against the constitutionality of an Independent-Counsel law), and his majority opinions in Crawford v. Washington (defining a criminal defendant's confrontation right under the Sixth Amendment) and District of Columbia v. Heller (holding that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees an individual right to handgun ownership).
Early life and education
Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey.[10] He was the only child of Salvatore Eugenio (Eugene) Scalia (1903–1986), an Italian immigrant from Sommatino, Sicily. Scalia's father graduated from Rutgers University and was a graduate student at Columbia University and clerk at the time of his son's birth.[11] The elder Scalia would become a professor of Romance languages at Brooklyn College, where he was an adherent to the formalist New Criticism school of literary theory.[12] Scalia's mother, Catherine Louise (née Panaro) Scalia (1905–1985), was born in Trenton to Italian immigrant parents and worked as an elementary school teacher.[11][13]
In 1939, Scalia and his family moved to Elmhurst, Queens, where he attended P.S. 13 Clement C. Moore School.[14][15] After completing eighth grade,[16] he obtained an academic scholarship to Xavier High School, a Jesuit military school in Manhattan,[17] from which he graduated ranked first in his class in 1953.[18] Scalia achieved a 97.5 average at Xavier, earning decorations in Latin, Greek, and debate, among other subjects, in addition to being a distinguished member of its Glee club.[19] He later reflected that he spent much of his time on schoolwork and admitted, "I was never cool."[20]
While a youth, Scalia was also active as a Boy Scout and was part of the Scouts' national honor society, the Order of the Arrow.[21] Classmate and future New York State official William Stern remembered Scalia in his high school days: "This kid was a conservative when he was 17 years old. An archconservative Catholic. He could have been a member of the Curia. He was the top student in the class. He was brilliant, way above everybody else."[10][22]
In 1953, Scalia enrolled at Georgetown University, where he majored in history. He became a champion collegiate debater in Georgetown's Philodemic Society and a critically praised thespian.[23] He took his junior year abroad in Switzerland at the University of Fribourg.[10] Scalia graduated from Georgetown in 1957 as class valedictorian with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude. Scalia then studied law at Harvard Law School, where he was a notes editor for the Harvard Law Review.[24] He graduated from Harvard Law in 1960 with a Bachelor of Laws, magna cum laude. Harvard awarded Scalia a Sheldon Fellowship, which allowed him to travel abroad in Europe during 1960 and 1961.[25]
Early legal career (1961–1982)
Scalia began his legal career at the law firm Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis (now Jones Day) in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked from 1961 to 1967.[24] He was highly regarded at the law firm and would most likely have been made a partner but later said he had long intended to teach. He left Jones Day in 1967 to become a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, moving his family to Charlottesville.[26]
After four years in Charlottesville, Scalia entered public service in 1971. President Richard Nixon appointed him general counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy, where one of his principal assignments was to formulate federal policy for the growth of cable television. From 1972 to 1974, he was chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a small independent agency that sought to improve the functioning of the federal bureaucracy.[25] In mid-1974, Nixon nominated him as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel.[25] After Nixon's resignation, the nomination was continued by President Gerald Ford, and Scalia was confirmed by the Senate on August 22, 1974.[27]
In the aftermath of Watergate, the Ford administration was engaged in a number of conflicts with Congress. Scalia repeatedly testified before congressional committees, defending Ford administration assertions of executive privilege regarding its refusal to turn over documents.[28] Within the administration, Scalia advocated a presidential veto for a bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act, which would greatly increase the act's scope. Scalia's view prevailed, and Ford vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode it.[29] In early 1976, Scalia argued his only case before the Supreme Court, Alfred Dunhill of London, Inc. v. Republic of Cuba. Scalia, on behalf of the U.S. government, argued in support of Dunhill, and that position was successful.[30]
Following Ford's defeat by President Jimmy Carter, Scalia worked for several months at the American Enterprise Institute.[31]
He then returned to academia, taking up residence at the University of Chicago Law School from 1977 to 1982,[32] though he spent one year as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School.[33] During Scalia's time at Chicago, Peter H. Russell hired him on behalf of the Canadian government to write a report on how the United States was able to limit the activities of its secret services for the McDonald Commission, which was investigating abuses by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The report—finished in 1979—encouraged the commission to recommend that a balance be struck between civil liberties and the essentially unchecked activities of the RCMP.[34] In 1981, he became the first faculty adviser for the University of Chicago's chapter of the newly founded Federalist Society.[32]
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1982–1986)
When Ronald Reagan was elected president in November 1980, Scalia hoped for a major position in the new administration. He was interviewed for the position of Solicitor General of the United States, but the position went to Rex E. Lee, to Scalia's great disappointment.[35] Scalia was offered a judgeship on the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in early 1982 but declined it, hoping to be appointed to the more influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Later that year, Reagan offered Scalia a seat on the D.C. Circuit, which he accepted.[36] He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 5, 1982, and was sworn in on August 17, 1982.
On the D.C. Circuit, Scalia built a conservative record while winning applause in legal circles for powerful, witty legal writing which was often critical of the Supreme Court precedents he felt bound as a lower-court judge to follow. Scalia's opinions drew the attention of Reagan administration officials, who, according to The New York Times, "liked virtually everything they saw and ... listed him as a leading Supreme Court prospect".[37]