84 Special

November

2017

Justice Scalia was a frank man. Not only that, he was transparent.

One afternoon in the late spring of 1991, the home stretch of my law school career, the phone in The University of Chicago Law Review offices rang.

Justice Scalia visited the Law School in February 2012. He taught my constitutional law class—by “taught,” he said a few words about the Seventeenth Amendment and then fielded questions lobbed from the class about anything but the Seventeenth Amendment.

When former President Ronald Reagan died in 2004, an outpouring of praise followed from across the political spectrum.

I knew Justice Scalia for many years and considered him a generous friend. We were both great supporters of the Federalist Society and met frequently at Society events, but our longest and most interesting conversations usually happened when I called him to recommend students for clerkships, which I did quite often.

Judicial departmentalism is the view that the Constitution means in the judicial department what the Supreme Court says it means in deciding a case.

Justice Scalia never liked tributes or accolades.

If you conduct an online search for something like “Justice Scalia’s most important opinions” or “Justice Scalia’s most influential opinions,” you will (or at least I did) almost always end up with a list that is top-heavy with dissents.

Everyone in the legal community knows about Lujan v Defenders of Wildlife.

In the time since Justice Antonin Scalia’s untimely death, much has been written about what his influence has been and what his influence will be. It is said that, perhaps more than any of his predecessors, he shaped how lawyers, judges, and even laypeople see the role of unelected federal judges in a democratic society.