Who was Antonin Scalia?
Antonin Scalia was an American judge and law professor. He was born in 1936 in Trenton, New Jersey, and raised in Queens, New York, the son of an Italian immigrant. After Georgetown and Harvard Law School he worked in private practice, then taught law and served in the Ford administration as a top Justice Department lawyer. He sat on the D.C. Circuit before President Ronald Reagan put him on the Supreme Court in 1986. The Senate backed him 98-0. He stayed on the Court until he died in February 2016, and he shaped how many American judges read laws.
Political views
- Scalia argued that judges should follow the original meaning of the Constitution and the plain words of statutes. He rejected the idea of a 'living Constitution' that shifts over time.Source: oyez.org
- He wrote the Court's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). It held that the Second Amendment protects a person's right to keep a handgun at home.Source: law.cornell.edu
- In his Casey dissent in 1992, he said the Constitution does not protect abortion and does not ban it. In his view the states should decide.Source: law.cornell.edu
- He dissented in Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges. He argued that voters, not judges, should decide questions such as same-sex marriage.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- In 1988 he was the only justice to dissent in Morrison v. Olson. He held that the independent counsel law broke the separation of powers.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- He thought the death penalty was constitutional. He disagreed with decisions that ended executions of juvenile offenders and of offenders with intellectual disabilities.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- He wrote that the government can never have a compelling interest in using racial preferences to repair past discrimination.Source: en.wikipedia.org
Legacy
Supporters say Scalia changed how American courts argue. Judges and lawyers now start with the text of a law and what it meant when it was written, and Justice Elena Kagan once said that 'we are all textualists now'. He was given a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom. Critics say his method conveniently landed on conservative answers about abortion, gay rights and affirmative action, and that his harsh dissents made the Court's debates more bitter. Others point to cases where his reading cut against his own politics, such as protecting flag burning, and to his warm friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In their own words
“The States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so.”