Antonin Scalia Biography Quotes 12 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Antonin Gregory Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey, the only child of Salvatore Eugene Scalia and Catherine Panaro Scalia. His father, an immigrant from Sicily, became a professor of Romance languages at Brooklyn College, and his mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants, taught in elementary schools. The family moved to Queens, New York, where Scalia grew up in a Catholic household that prized discipline, learning, and faith. He attended Xavier High School in Manhattan, a Jesuit school with a strong military program, and then Georgetown University, where he graduated in 1957 as valedictorian with an A.B. degree. During college he spent time studying abroad in Switzerland, an experience that deepened his interest in the European roots of American institutions. He continued his education at Harvard Law School, earning an LL.B. magna cum laude in 1960 and serving on the Harvard Law Review.

Early Legal Career and Government Service
After Harvard, Scalia did not follow the then-common path of a judicial clerkship. Instead he joined the Cleveland firm Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis, where he practiced from 1961 to 1967 and developed an early expertise in regulatory and appellate matters. Drawn to teaching and public service, he joined the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law in 1967. His academic work quickly intersected with national policy. In 1971 he entered the Nixon administration as General Counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, where rapidly changing communications technologies and the still-new world of cable and satellite raised complex questions of regulation and free speech. He next served as chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 1972 to 1974, a body devoted to improving the procedures and efficiency of federal agencies.

In 1974 President Gerald Ford appointed Scalia Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. At OLC he advised the executive branch on constitutional issues in the turbulent period after Watergate. He remained into the early Carter administration to facilitate transition, then returned to academia. The OLC role, closely linked to the presidency and the Department of Justice, refined his views on separation of powers and executive authority, themes that would later recur in his judicial opinions.

Academic Influence and the D.C. Circuit
From 1977 to 1982 Scalia taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where he became a prominent voice in administrative law, statutory interpretation, and constitutional structure. He engaged vigorously with colleagues and students about interpretive method and the virtues of a limited judiciary. During these years he also became an early participant in the formative activities of the Federalist Society, where he encouraged a generation of law students and lawyers to articulate a jurisprudence grounded in text, history, and structural limits. His time in Chicago connected him with scholars and future jurists across the intellectual spectrum, relationships that would follow him onto the bench.

President Ronald Reagan nominated Scalia to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982. On that influential court he served alongside figures such as Robert Bork and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sharpening arguments about statutory meaning, agency power, and the role of courts in reviewing administrative action. His opinions displayed a crisp, exacting style and a willingness to write separately when principle, as he saw it, demanded it.

Appointment to the Supreme Court
In 1986 President Reagan elevated Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist to Chief Justice and nominated Scalia to fill the resulting vacancy on the Supreme Court. Scalia was confirmed by a 98-0 vote, becoming the first Italian American to serve on the Court. He joined the Court under Chief Justice Warren Burger and then served through the Rehnquist and John G. Roberts Jr. Courts until his death in 2016. His arrival marked a new era in which debates over originalism and textualism moved from the academy into the heart of judicial decision making.

Jurisprudence and Major Opinions
Scalia described himself as an originalist in constitutional interpretation and a textualist in statutory interpretation. By originalism he meant that the Constitution should be understood according to its public meaning at the time of adoption; by textualism he meant that statutes should be read for the ordinary meaning of their enacted words, not for legislative history or perceived purposes. He believed these methods constrained judicial discretion and preserved democratic accountability.

He authored landmark majority opinions that reshaped several fields. In Employment Division v. Smith (1990) he wrote for the Court that the Free Exercise Clause does not excuse individuals from compliance with neutral, generally applicable laws, a ruling that prompted a bipartisan legislative response in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In Printz v. United States (1997) he wrote that the federal government may not commandeer state officials to carry out federal regulatory schemes, a cornerstone of federalism doctrine. In Crawford v. Washington (2004) he revitalized the Confrontation Clause by requiring that testimonial hearsay generally be subject to cross-examination. In Blakely v. Washington (2004) he applied the Sixth Amendment jury trial right to invalidate certain judicial sentencing enhancements. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) he wrote the majority opinion recognizing an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, relying heavily on historical analysis of the Second Amendment. He also authored a plurality in Rapanos v. United States (2006), arguing for a narrower understanding of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.

Scalia was equally known for his dissents, many of which influenced later law. His lone dissent in Morrison v. Olson (1988) contended that the independent counsel statute violated separation of powers. Though the statute survived then, his reasoning became a touchstone for critics of unaccountable executive officers. He dissented forcefully in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), United States v. Windsor (2013), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), arguing that constitutional change should occur through democratic processes rather than judicial decree. In administrative law he initially championed deference to agency interpretations, as reflected in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, but later criticized deference to agencies' interpretations of their own regulations and called for reconsideration of that doctrine.

His prose was vivid, learned, and often pointed. Scalia believed that clear, forceful writing could clarify doctrine and anchor the law against drift. He sparred in print with colleagues across the spectrum, including Stephen Breyer, and brought interpretive debates to public audiences in lectures and dialogues. His methodological consistency also produced surprising alignments: he often sided with criminal defendants on Sixth Amendment questions and demanded strict adherence to jury rights and confrontation protections.

Relationships on the Court and Public Image
Scalia's tenure was marked by strong alliances and famous friendships. He shared many jurisprudential commitments with Clarence Thomas and often joined opinions with Chief Justice Rehnquist and, later, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. He also developed an affectionate, widely admired friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, his former D.C. Circuit colleague and fellow opera enthusiast. Their cordiality, despite sharp doctrinal disagreements, became an emblem of civil discourse. He hunted with colleagues, including Elena Kagan after her appointment, a gesture of collegial outreach that both joked about publicly.

Within the Court, Scalia's sharp questioning enlivened oral arguments. His give-and-take with advocates and fellow justices reflected his view that adversarial testing and methodological clarity fortify the law. He did not shy from controversy, as in Bush v. Gore (2000), which he joined, and in a recusal dispute arising from a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney. He defended his decisions and methods in speeches and essays, inviting critique rather than avoiding it.

Writing and Teaching Beyond the Bench
Scalia remained a teacher throughout his career. He co-authored Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges (2008) and, with Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012), works that distilled his views on rhetoric and interpretation for practitioners and students. He delivered lectures at law schools across the country, returning often to themes of democratic accountability, structural constitutional safeguards, and the importance of the written word. Even when his views met resistance, his clarity ensured that debates were joined on defined, comprehensible terms.

Personal Life
Scalia married Maureen McCarthy in 1960, and together they raised nine children. Family life and Roman Catholic faith were central to him. His son Eugene Scalia became a prominent labor and administrative law attorney and later served as U.S. Secretary of Labor. His son Paul Scalia became a Catholic priest. Friends and colleagues often remarked on the warmth of the Scalia household, on Maureen's hospitality, and on the steadiness that family gave him amid the pressures of public life. He loved opera, hunting, and lively dinner-table argument. The blend of formality and wit that marked his public writing also colored his private conversation.

Death and Legacy
Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016, while visiting a ranch in West Texas. Authorities reported that he died of natural causes. His death, at age 79, immediately underscored the stakes of judicial appointments, but it also prompted remembrances focused on his mind, character, and friendships. His funeral Mass in Washington, D.C., was celebrated by his son Paul, and was attended by family, friends, and colleagues from across the legal and political spectrum, including justices with whom he had often disagreed.

Scalia's legacy is measured in opinions, in students and lawyers he influenced, and in the vocabulary of interpretation that he helped bring to the center of American law. He pressed courts to start with enacted text, to honor the Constitution's structure, and to remember that law is not an exercise in personal will. Whether one agreed with his conclusions or not, he demanded clarity about premises and consequences. The rise of originalism and textualism as serious, mainstream approaches to judging owes much to his voice and example. Colleagues such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Chief Justice John Roberts each engaged with him in ways that refined their own jurisprudence and the Court's collective work. In that sense, his most enduring companions are the arguments he left behind, still shaping how judges, lawyers, and citizens read their Constitution and their laws.

Our collection contains 12 quotes who is written by Antonin, under the main topics: Truth - Justice - Writing - Sarcastic - Equality.

Other people realated to Antonin: William J. Brennan (Judge), Thurgood Marshall (Judge), Sandra Day O'Connor (Judge), Warren E. Burger (Judge), Byron White (Judge), Sonia Sotomayor (Judge), Elena Kagan (Judge), William J. Brennan, Jr. (Judge), John Paul Stevens (Judge), Strom Thurmond (Politician)