Background

Antonin Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. He was a son of Salvatore Eugene Scalia, teacher of Romance languages, and Catherine Louise Scalia, an elementary school teacher. His father immigrated from Sicily and his mother was a first generation Italian-American.

Education

Antonin Scalia grew up in a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Queens in New York City. He attended a public elementary school where he was a straight A student. He went on to Xavier High School in Manhattan, a military school run by the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church. It was there that Scalia’s conservatism and deep religious conviction was further developed.

In 1953, Scalia enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he graduated valedictorian and summa cum laude with a bachelors degree in history in 1957. From 1955 to 1956 he attended the University of Fribourg in Switzeland. After graduation from Georgetown University, he went on to study at Harvard Law School. During his final year he met Maureen McCarthy, an undergraduate at Radcliffe College. In 1960 Scalia received a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Harvard University.

Career

From 1961 to 1967, Antonin Scalia practiced law in Cleveland, Ohio, with the firm of Jones, Day, Cockley, and Rcavis, where he handled a variety of commercial matters, including labor and antitrust issues. In 1967, however, he exchanged the life of a practicing lawyer for that of a law teacher by joining the faculty of the University of Virginia. He left the academic setting four years later to join the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, serving first in the Office of Telecommunication Policy as general counsel. Soon afterward, he assumed a position as chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a role in which he served from 1972 to 1974. Shortly before President Nixon resigned in the wake of the Water Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Scalia continued in that post after President Gerald Ford assumed the presidency, leaving only in 1977 after Jimmy Carter was elected president. Following a brief stint at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington D.C., and at Georgetown University Law Center, Scalia accepted a teaching position at the University of Chicago Law School. He taught there from 1977 to 1982, with a brief interlude as a visiting professor at Stanford University in Califonia. Toward the end of this period Scalia served as the chairman of the American Bar Association’s section on administrative law and its Conference of Section Chairs.

The return of a Republican administration to Washington under President Ronald Reagan soon ended Scalia's academic career. In 1982 Reagan appointed Scalia to the prestigious United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where he earned a reputation for his keen intellect, his pleasure in vigorous legal arguments, and his gregarious temperament.

This appointment proved to be a step toward an even loftier position. In September 1986 Chief Justice Warren E. Burger retired from the Supreme Court, and President Reagan responded to the vacancy by nominating Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist to fill the post of a chief justice and Antonin Scalia to step into the position of associate justice left open by Rehnquist's promotion. Rehnquist's nomination provoked the most controversy; he was eventually confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 65-33 on September 17, 1986. Scalia's nomination, by contrast, sailed through the Senate the same day unanimously, with virtually no comment from the floor. He took the oath of office as a justice on the Supreme Court nine days later, becoming its youngest member and its first Roman Catholic since the appointment of William J. Brennan, Jr., in 1957.

Achievements

• Antonin Scalia was the most influential Supreme Court Justice of his generation and the first Italian-American to serve in this position. Scalia was known for his generally conservative legal opinions. His approach to judging inspired many other legal scholars to develop their own coherent judicial philosophies. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived

    (This definitive collection of beloved Supreme Court Justi...)

    2017
  • A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law

    (We are all familiar with the image of the immensely cleve...)

    1997
  • Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges

    (In their professional lives courtroom lawyers must do the...)

    2008
  • Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts

    (In this groundbreaking book by best-selling authors Justi...)

    2012

Religion

Antonin Scalia was a devout Roman Catholic. Uncomfortable with the changes brought about following Vatican II, Scalia drove long distances to parishes he felt were more in accord with his beliefs.

Politics

Antonin Scalia served on the Court for nearly thirty years, during which time he espoused a conservative jurisprudence and ideology, advocating textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation. He was a strong defender of the powers of the executive branch, believing presidential power should be paramount in many areas. In numerous articles, speeches, and opinions, Scalia had established a reputation as a staunch conservative who opposed Supreme Court positions on abortion, libel, affirmative action, the death penalty, busing to promote school desegregation, and the independence of federal administrative agencies.

Unlike some justices, who seem to approach cases without any well-established judicial philosophy, Justice Scalia has been trank about lois guiding principles. In the first place, he lays claim to being an "originalist," arguing that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of the understanding of its text at the time it was written. He has publicly mocked the idea of a "living Constitution," influential in the judicial decision-making of such famous liberal justices as William Brennan, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall. According to Scalia, a "living Constitution" can contain anything that five justices (a majority on the Supreme Court) are willing to find in it and is inconsistent with the notion of democratic rule. Scalia, for example, has explicitly denied that the Constitution should be interpreted to protect rights not specifically mentioned in it, such as a right to an abortion or a right to die.

Views

Quotations: "Being a good person begins with being a wise person. Then, when you follow your conscience, will you be headed in the right direction."

"A man who has made no enemies is probably not a very good man."

"The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people."

"I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I've gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It's an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution. That is what I've meant when I've said that the Constitution is dead."

Personality

To many who knew him personally, Antonin Scalia was unpretentious, charming and funny. Outside of his work on the Supreme Court, he was an avid supporter of opera and many theatrical arts.

Quotes from others about the person

• 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."

Interests

• opera, Baroque music

Connections

On September 10, 1960, Antonin Scalia married Maureen McCarthy. They have nine children: Ann, Eugene, John, Catherine, Mary, Paul, Matthew, Christopher, Margaret.

Father:

Salvatore Eugene Scalia

Mother:

Catherine Louise Scalia

Spouse:

Maureen McCarthy

Daughter:

Ann Scalia

Son:

Eugene Scalia

Son:

John Scalia

Daughter:

Mary Scalia

Son:

Paul Scalia

Son:

Matthew Scalia

Daughter:

Catherine Scalia

Son:

Christopher Scalia

Daughter:

Margaret Scalia

Friend:

Ruth Ginsburg

References

• The Political Thought of Justice Antonin Scalia: A Hamiltonian on the Supreme Court This book traces Justice Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence back to the political and constitutional thought of Alexander Hamilton.
  2006
• Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence: Text and Tradition This book is the first comprehensive, reasoned, and sympathetic analysis of how Scalia has decided cases during his entire twenty-year Supreme Court tenure. Ralph Rossum focuses on Scalia's more than 600 Supreme Court opinions and dissents - carefully wrought, passionately argued, and filled with well-turned phrases - which portray him as an eloquent defender of an "original meaning" jurisprudence.
  2006
• American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia In this book, the veteran Washington journalist Joan Biskupic presents for the first time a detailed portrait of this complicated figure and provides a comprehensive narrative that will engage Scalia's adherents and critics alike.
  2009