Antonin Scalia

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Antonin Scalia bigraphy, stories - Supreme Court Associate Justice

Antonin Scalia : biography

March 11, 1936 –

Antonin Gregory Scalia ( born March 11, 1936) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice currently on the Court, Scalia is the Senior Associate Justice. Appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia has been described as the intellectual anchor of the Court’s conservative wing.

Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and attended public grade school and Catholic high school in New York City, where his family had moved. He attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate and obtained his Bachelor of Laws degree from Harvard Law School. After spending six years in a Cleveland law firm, he became a law school professor. In the early 1970s, he served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, first at minor administrative agencies, and then as an assistant attorney general. 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, he was appointed as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Ronald Reagan.

In 1986, Scalia was appointed by Reagan to the Supreme Court to fill the associate justice seat vacated when Justice William Rehnquist was elevated to Chief Justice. Whereas Rehnquist’s confirmation was contentious, Scalia was asked few difficult questions by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and faced no opposition. Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

In his quarter-century on the Court, Scalia has staked out a conservative ideology in his opinions, advocating textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation. He is a strong defender of the powers of the executive branch, believing presidential power should be paramount in many areas. He opposes affirmative action and other policies that treat minorities as groups. He files separate opinions in large numbers of cases, and, in his minority opinions, often castigates the Court’s majority in scathing language.

Works

  • Scalia, Antonin, and Gutmann, Amy, ed., (1997) A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press) ISBN 0-691-00400-5.
  • Scalia, Antonin; Garner, Bryan A. (2008) Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges (St. Paul: Thomson West) ISBN 978-0-314-18471-9.
  • Scalia, Antonin; Garner, Bryan A. (2012) Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (St. Paul: Thomson West) ISBN 978-0314275554.

Public attention

Requests for recusals

Scalia recused himself in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, a claim brought by atheist Michael Newdow alleging the 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, Scalia, speaking at a Knights of Columbus event in Fredericksburg, Virginia, stated 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, which he did without comment.

Scalia refused to recuse himself in 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 refused to recuse himself, stating that though Cheney was a longtime friend, he was merely being sued 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 since he had bought round-trip tickets, the cheapest available. (fee for article) Scalia was part of the 7–2 majority once the case was heard which generally upheld Cheney’s position. (fee for article)