as unconstitutional. Such positions would earn him a reputation as one of the most conservative justices on the Court. He filed separate opinions in many cases, often castigating the Court's majority—sometimes scathingly so.
Scalia's most significant opinions include his lone dissent in
Second Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution guarantees an individual right to handgun ownership).
née Panaro) Scalia (1905–1985), was born in Trenton to Italian immigrant parents and worked as an elementary school teacher.[12][14]
In 1939, Scalia and his family moved to
Jesuit military school in Manhattan,[18] from which he graduated ranked first in his class in 1953.[19] Scalia achieved a 97.5 average at Xavier, earning decorations in Latin, Greek, and debate, among other subjects, in addition to being a distinguished member of its Glee club.[20] He later reflected that he spent much of his time on schoolwork and admitted, "I was never cool."[21]
While a youth, Scalia was also active as a Boy Scout and was part of the Scouts' national honor society, the Order of the Arrow.[22] 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."[11][23]
Scalia began his legal career at the law firm Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis (now
Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked from 1961 to 1967.[25] He was highly regarded at the law firm and would most likely have been made a partner but later said he had long intended to teach. He left Jones Day in 1967 to become a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, moving his family to Charlottesville.[27]
After four years in Charlottesville, Scalia entered public service in 1971. President
independent agency that sought to improve the functioning of the federal bureaucracy.[26] In mid-1974, Nixon nominated him as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel.[26] After Nixon's resignation, the nomination was continued by President Gerald Ford, and Scalia was confirmed by the Senate on August 22, 1974.[28]
In the aftermath of Watergate, the Ford administration was engaged in a number of conflicts with Congress. Scalia repeatedly testified before congressional committees, defending Ford administration assertions of executive privilege regarding its refusal to turn over documents.[29] Within the administration, Scalia advocated a presidential veto for a bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act, which would greatly increase the act's scope. Scalia's view prevailed, and Ford vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode it.[30] In early 1976, Scalia argued his only case before the Supreme Court, Alfred Dunhill of London, Inc. v. Republic of Cuba. Scalia, on behalf of the US government, argued in support of Dunhill, and that position was successful.[31]
Following Ford's defeat by President Jimmy Carter, Scalia worked for several months at the American Enterprise Institute.[32]
He then returned to academia, taking up residence at the
visiting professor at Stanford Law School.[34] During Scalia's time at Chicago, Peter H. Russell hired him on behalf of the Canadian government to write a report on how the United States was able to limit the activities of its secret services for the McDonald Commission, which was investigating abuses by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The report—finished in 1979—encouraged the commission to recommend that a balance be struck between civil liberties and the essentially unchecked activities of the RCMP.[35] In 1981, he became the first faculty adviser for the University of Chicago's chapter of the newly founded Federalist Society.[33]
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1982–1986)
When Ronald Reagan was elected president in November 1980, Scalia hoped for a major position in the new administration. He was interviewed for the position of Solicitor General of the United States, but the position went to Rex E. Lee, to Scalia's great disappointment.[36] Scalia was offered a judgeship on the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in early 1982 but declined it, hoping to be appointed to the more influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Later that year, Reagan offered Scalia a seat on the D.C. Circuit, which he accepted.[37] He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 5, 1982, and was sworn in on August 17, 1982.
On the D.C. Circuit, Scalia built a conservative record while winning applause in legal circles for powerful, witty legal writing which was often critical of the Supreme Court precedents he felt bound as a lower-court judge to follow. Scalia's opinions drew the attention of Reagan administration officials, who, according to The New York Times, "liked virtually everything they saw and ... listed him as a leading Supreme Court prospect".[38]
Nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States (1986)
Warren Burger informed the White House of his intent to retire. Reagan first decided to nominate Associate Justice William Rehnquist to become Chief Justice. That choice meant that Reagan would also have to choose a nominee to fill Rehnquist's seat as associate justice.[39] Attorney General Edwin Meese, who advised Reagan on the choice, seriously considered only Scalia and Robert Bork, a fellow judge on the DC Circuit.[40] Feeling that this might well be Reagan's last opportunity to pick a Supreme Court justice, the president and his advisers chose Scalia over Bork. Many factors influenced the decision. Reagan wanted to appoint the first Italian-American justice.[41] In addition, Scalia was ten years younger and would likely serve longer on the Court.[39] Scalia also had the advantage of not having Bork's "paper trail";[42] the elder judge had written controversial articles about individual rights.[43] Scalia was called to the White House and accepted Reagan's nomination.[39]
When
Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Scalia's nomination opened in August 1986, he faced a committee that had just argued divisively over the Rehnquist nomination. Witnesses and Democratic senators contended that before becoming a judge, Rehnquist had engaged in activities designed to discourage minorities from voting. Committee members had little taste for a second battle over Scalia and were in any event reluctant to oppose the first Italian-American Supreme Court nominee.[44] The judge was not pressed heavily on controversial issues such as abortion or civil rights.[45] Scalia, who attended the hearing with his wife and nine children seated behind him, found time for a humorous exchange with Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), whom he had defeated in a tennis match in, as the nominee put it, "a case of my integrity overcoming my judgment".[46]
Scalia met no opposition from the committee. The Senate debated Scalia's nomination only briefly, confirming him 98–0 on September 17, thereby making him the Court's first Italian-American Justice. That vote followed Rehnquist's confirmation as Chief Justice by a vote of 65–33 on the same day. Scalia took his seat on September 26, 1986. One committee member, Senator and future President Joe Biden (D-DE), later stated that he regretted not having opposed Scalia "because he was so effective".[47]
Supreme Court
Governmental structure and powers
Separation of powers
It was Scalia's view that clear lines of separation among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches follow directly from the Constitution, with no branch allowed to exercise powers granted to another branch.
Independent Counsel law. Scalia's thirty-page draft dissent surprised Justice Harry Blackmun for its emotional content; Blackmun felt "it could be cut down to ten pages if Scalia omitted the screaming".[49] Scalia indicated that the law was an unwarranted encroachment on the executive branch by the legislative. He warned, "Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing ... But this wolf comes as a wolf".[49]
The 1989 case of
United States Sentencing Guidelines promulgated by the commission were invalid. Eight justices joined in the majority opinion written by Blackmun, upholding the Guidelines as constitutional.[50] Scalia dissented, stating that the issuance of the Guidelines was a lawmaking function that Congress could not delegate[51] and dubbed the Commission "a sort of junior-varsity Congress".[49]
In 1996, Congress passed the
appropriations bill (a bill authorizing spending) once passed into law. The statute was challenged the following year. The matter rapidly reached the Supreme Court, which struck down the law as violating the Presentment Clause of the Constitution, which governs what the president is permitted to do with a bill once it has passed both houses of Congress.[52] Scalia dissented, seeing no Presentment Clause difficulties and feeling that the act did not violate the separation of powers. He argued that authorizing the president to cancel an appropriation was no different from allowing him to spend an appropriation at his discretion, which had long been accepted as constitutional.[53]
Detainee cases
In 2004, in
Guantanamo Bay detainment camp. Scalia accused the majority of "spring[ing] a trap on the Executive" by ruling that it could hear cases involving persons at Guantanamo when no federal court had ever ruled that it had the authority to hear cases involving people there.[54]
Scalia, joined by Justice
AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists) could not be read to suspend habeas corpus and that the Court, faced with legislation by Congress that did not grant the president power to detain Hamdi, was trying to "Make Everything Come Out Right".[55]
In March 2006, Scalia gave a talk at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. When asked about detainee rights, he responded: "Give me a break ... I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son, and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy".
recuse himself, or step aside from hearing the case, which he declined to do.[57] The Court held 5–3 in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the federal courts had jurisdiction to consider Hamdan's claims; Scalia, in dissent, contended that any Court authority to consider Hamdan's petition had been eliminated by the jurisdiction-strippingDetainee Treatment Act of 2005.[58]
Federalism
In
medicinal purposes. Scalia opined that the Commerce Clause, together with the Necessary and Proper Clause, permitted the regulation. In addition, Scalia felt that Congress may regulate intrastate activities if doing so is a necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce.[60] He based that decision on Wickard v. Filburn, which he now wrote "expanded the Commerce Clause beyond all reason".[61]
Scalia took a broad view of the Eleventh Amendment, which bars certain lawsuits against states in the federal courts. In his 1989 dissent in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., Scalia stated that there was no intent on the part of the framers to have the states surrender any sovereign immunity and that the case that provoked the Eleventh Amendment, Chisholm v. Georgia, came as a surprise to them. Professor Ralph Rossum, who wrote a survey of Scalia's constitutional views, suggests that the justice's view of the Eleventh Amendment was actually contradictory to the language of the Amendment.[65]
Individual rights
Abortion
Scalia argued that there is no constitutional right to abortion and that if the people desire legalized abortion, a law should be passed to accomplish it.[21] In his dissenting opinion in the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Scalia wrote:
The States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so. The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.[66]
"We can now look forward to at least another Term with carts full of mail from the public, and streets full of demonstrators, urging us — their unelected and life-tenured judges who have been awarded those extraordinary, undemocratic characteristics precisely in order that we might follow the law despite the popular will — to follow the popular will."
Scalia repeatedly called upon his colleagues to strike down Roe v. Wade. Scalia hoped to find five votes to strike down Roe in the 1989 case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services but was not successful in doing so. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cast the deciding vote, allowing the abortion regulations at issue in the case to stand but not overruling Roe. Scalia concurred only in part,[67] writing, "Justice O'Connor's assertion, that a 'fundamental rule of judicial restraint' requires us to avoid reconsidering Roe cannot be taken seriously".[68] He noted, "We can now look forward to at least another Term of carts full of mail from the public, and the streets full of demonstrators".[69]
The Court returned to the issue of abortion in the 2000 case of
partial-birth abortion. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the Court that the law was unconstitutional because it did not allow an exception for the health of the woman. Scalia dissented, comparing the Stenberg case to two of the most reviled cases in Supreme Court history: "I am optimistic enough to believe that, one day, Stenberg v. Carhart will be assigned its rightful place in the history of this Court's jurisprudence beside Korematsu and Dred Scott. The method of killing a human child ... proscribed by this statute is so horrible that the most clinical description of it evokes a shudder of revulsion".[70]
In 2007, the Court upheld a federal statute banning partial-birth abortion in Gonzales v. Carhart.[71] University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone, a former colleague of Scalia's, criticized Gonzales, stating that religion had influenced the outcome because all five justices in the majority were Catholic, whereas the dissenters were Protestant or Jewish.[72] This angered Scalia to such an extent that he stated he would not speak at the University of Chicago as long as Stone was there.[73]
Race, gender, and sexual orientation
Scalia generally voted to strike down laws that make distinctions by race, gender, or sexual orientation. In 1989, he concurred with the Court's judgment in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., in which the Court applied strict scrutiny to a city program requiring a certain percentage of contracts to go to minorities, and struck down the program. Scalia did not join the majority opinion, however. He disagreed with O'Connor's opinion for the Court, holding that states and localities could institute race-based programs if they identified past discrimination and if the programs were designed to remedy the past racism.[74] Five years later, in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, he concurred in the Court's judgment and in part with the opinion that extended strict scrutiny to federal programs. Scalia noted in that matter his view that government can never have a compelling interest in making up for past discrimination by racial preferences:
To pursue the concept of racial entitlement—even for the most admirable and benign of purposes—is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.[75]
In the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, involving racial preferences in the University of Michigan's law school, Scalia mocked the Court majority's finding that the school was entitled to continue using race as a factor in admissions to promote diversity and to increase "cross-racial understanding". Scalia noted:
This is not, of course, an "educational benefit" on which students will be graded on their Law School transcript (Works and Plays Well with Others: B+) or tested by the bar examiners (Q: Describe in 500 words or less your cross-racial understanding). For it is a lesson of life rather than law—essentially the same lesson taught to (or rather learned by, for it cannot be "taught" in the usual sense) people three feet shorter and twenty years younger than the full-grown adults at the University of Michigan Law School, in institutions ranging from Boy Scout troops to public-school kindergartens.[76]
Scalia argued that laws that make distinctions between genders should be subjected to intermediate scrutiny, requiring that the gender classification be substantially related to important government objectives.[77] When, in 1996, the Court upheld a suit brought by a woman who wished to enter the Virginia Military Institute in the case of United States v. Virginia, Scalia filed a lone, lengthy dissent. Scalia said that the Court, in requiring Virginia to show an "extremely persuasive justification" for the single-sex admission policy, had redefined intermediate scrutiny in such a way "that makes it indistinguishable from strict scrutiny".[78]
In one of the final decisions of the Burger Court, the Court ruled in 1986 in
right of privacy and could be criminally prosecuted by the states.[80] In 1995, however, that ruling was effectively gutted by Romer v. Evans, which struck down a Colorado state constitutional amendment, passed by popular vote, that forbade antidiscrimination laws' being extended to sexual orientation.[81] Scalia dissented from the opinion by Justice Kennedy, believing that Bowers had protected the right of the states to pass such measures and that the Colorado amendment was not discriminatory but merely prevented homosexuals from gaining favored status under Colorado law.[82] Scalia later said of Romer, "And the Supreme Court said, 'Yes, it is unconstitutional.' On the basis of—I don't know, the Sexual Preference Clause of the Bill of Rights, presumably. And the liberals loved it, and the conservatives gnashed their teeth".[83]
In 2003, Bowers was formally overruled by
majoritarian theocracy".[88] Former Scalia clerk Ed Whelan called this "a smear and a distraction."[89] Professor John O. McGinnis responded as well,[90] leading to further exchanges.[91][92]
In the 2013 case of
Proposition 8 that amended the California State Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Scalia voted with the majority to uphold a lower court decision overturning the ban. The decision was based on the appellants' lack of standing to appeal and not on the substantive issue of the constitutionality of Proposition 8.[93]
Also in 2013, Scalia dissented from the majority opinion in United States v. Windsor. In Windsor, the Court held Section Three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (which—for federal government purposes—defined the terms "marriage" and "spouse" as applicable only to opposite-sex unions) unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.[94] Scalia's dissent, which was joined in full by Justice Thomas and in part by Chief Justice Roberts,[95] opened:
This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today's opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former. We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation.
Scalia argued that the judgment effectively characterized opponents of same-sex marriage as "enemies of the human race":[96][97] He argued that the Court's ruling would affect state bans on same-sex marriage as well:
As far as this Court is concerned, no one should be fooled; it is just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe.
By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.[98]
Scalia concluded by saying that the Supreme Court "has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat."[94]
In 2015, Scalia dissented from the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Court ruled that the fundamental right to marry was guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In his dissent, Scalia stated that the Court's decision effectively robbed the people of "the freedom to govern themselves", noting that a rigorous debate on same-sex marriage had been taking place and that—by deciding the issue nationwide—the democratic process had been halted.[99] Addressing the claimed Fourteenth Amendment violation, Scalia asserted that because a same-sex marriage ban would not have been considered unconstitutional at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption, such bans are not unconstitutional in 2015.[100] He claimed there was "no basis" for the Court to strike down legislation that the Fourteenth Amendment did not expressly forbid, and directly attacked the majority opinion for "lacking even a thin veneer of law".[100] Lastly, Scalia faulted the actual writing in the opinion for "diminish[ing] this Court's reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis" and for "descend[ing] from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie."[101]
Criminal law
Scalia believed the
underage, noting that less than half of the states that permitted the death penalty prohibited it for underage killers. He castigated the majority for including in their count states that had abolished the death penalty entirely, stating that doing so was "rather like including old-order Amishmen in a consumer-preference poll on the electric car. Of course they don't like it, but that sheds no light whatever on the point at issue".[104] In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional as applied to mentally retarded people. Scalia dissented, stating that it would not have been considered cruel or unusual to execute mildly mentally retarded people at the time of the 1791 adoption of the Bill of Rights and that the Court had failed to show that a national consensus had formed against the practice.[105]
Scalia strongly disfavored the Court's ruling in
advised of their rights was inadmissible in court, and he voted to overrule Miranda in the 2000 case of Dickerson v. United States but was in a minority of two with Justice Clarence Thomas. Calling the Miranda decision a "milestone of judicial overreaching", Scalia stated that the Court should not fear to correct its mistakes.[106]
Although, in many areas, Scalia's approach was unfavorable to criminal defendants, he took the side of defendants in matters involving the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees defendants the right to confront their accusers. In multiple cases, Scalia wrote against laws that allowed alleged victims of child abuse to testify behind screens or by closed-circuit television.[107] In a 2009 case, Scalia wrote the majority opinion in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, holding that defendants must have the opportunity to confront lab technicians in drug cases and that a certificate of analysis is not enough to prove a substance was a drug.[108]
Scalia maintained that every element of an offense that helps determine the sentence must be either admitted by the defendant or found by a jury under the Sixth Amendment's jury guarantee. In the 2000 case of Apprendi v. New Jersey, Scalia wrote a concurrence to the Court's majority opinion that struck down a state statute that allowed the trial judge to increase the sentence if the judge found the offense was a hate crime. Scalia found the procedure impermissible because whether it was a hate crime had not been decided by the jury.[109] In 2004, he wrote for the Court in Blakely v. Washington, striking down Washington state's sentencing guidelines on similar grounds. The dissenters in Blakely foresaw that Scalia would use the case to attack the federal sentencing guidelines (which he had failed to strike down in Mistretta), and they proved correct, as Scalia led a five-member majority in United States v. Booker, which made those guidelines no longer mandatory for federal judges to follow (they remained advisory).[109]
In the 2001 case of
St. Paul, Minnesota, hate speech ordinance in a prosecution for burning a cross.[112] Scalia noted, "Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone's front yard is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire".[113]
Second Amendment
"Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."
In 2008, the Court considered a challenge to the gun laws in the
District of Columbia. Scalia wrote the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which found an individual right to own a firearm under the Second Amendment. Scalia traced the word "militia", found in the Second Amendment, as it would have been understood at the time of its ratification, stating that it then meant "the body of all citizens".[114] The Court upheld Heller's claim to own a firearm in the District.[114]
Scalia's opinion for the Heller Court was criticized by liberals and applauded by conservatives.[115] Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner disagreed with Scalia's opinion, stating that the Second Amendment "creates no right to the private possession of guns". Posner called Scalia's opinion "faux originalism" and a "historicizing glaze on personal values and policy preferences".[116] In October 2008, Scalia stated that the court's originalists needed to show only that at the time the Second Amendment was ratified, the right to bear arms did not have an exclusively military context and that they were successful in so showing.[117]
Litigation and standing
Following the death of Scalia, Paul Barrett, writing for Bloomberg Businessweek, reported that: "Translating into liberal argot: Scalia changed the rules for who could sue". The issue elevated the recognition of Scalia as a notable influence on establishing and determining the conditions under which cases could be brought to trial and for litigation—and by whom such litigation could take place.[118] David Rivkin, from the conservative standpoint, said, "He (Scalia) did more to clarify and limit the bounds and scope of judicial power than any Supreme Court Justice in history, particularly in the area of standing and class actions". Scalia indicated his long-held position from the time of his 1983 law review article titled "The Doctrine of Standing as an Essential Element of the Separation of Powers". As summarized by Barrett, "He (Scalia) wrote that courts had misappropriated authority from other branches of government by allowing too many people to sue corporations and government agencies, especially in environmental cases". In a practical sense, Scalia brought to the attention of the Court the authority to restrict "standing" in class action suits in which the litigants may be defined in descriptive terms rather than as well-defined and unambiguous litigants.[119]
Other cases
Scalia concurred in the 1990 case of
clear and convincing evidence of such a desire. Scalia stated that the Court should have remained away from the dispute and that the issues "are [not] better known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory".[114]
Scalia joined the majority
per curiam opinion in the 2000 case of Bush v. Gore, which effectively ended recounts of ballots in Florida following the 2000 US presidential election, and also both concurred separately and joined Rehnquist's concurrence.[120] In 2007, he said of the case, "I and my court owe no apology whatever for Bush v. Gore. We did the right thing. So there! ... get over it. It's so old by now".[121] During an interview on the Charlie Rose show
, he defended the Court's action:
The decision was not close, it was 7–2 on the principal issue of whether there had been a constitutional violation ... But what if it was unconstitutional to have that recount? You're going to let it continue and come to a conclusion? And then overturn it? The reason to stop it sooner was not, "Ooh, we're worried that it's going to come out the wrong way"... you forget what was going on at the time. We were the laughingstock of the world. The world's greatest democracy that couldn't conduct an election. We didn't know who our next president was going to be. The lengthy transition that has become standard when you change from one president to another could not begin because you didn't know who the new president was going to be. It was becoming a very serious problem. The issue before the United States Supreme Court is: having decided the case, having decided this is unconstitutional, should we nonetheless let the election go on? Or is it time cut it off and let's move on?[122]
Legal philosophy and approach
Judicial performance
During oral argument before the Court, Scalia asked more questions and made more comments than any other justice.[123] A 2005 study found that he provoked laughter more often than any of his colleagues did.[124] His goal during oral arguments was to get across his position to the other justices.[125]University of Kansas social psychologist Lawrence Wrightsman wrote that Scalia communicated "a sense of urgency on the bench" and had a style that was "forever forceful".[123] After Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Court in 2005, he took to quizzing lawyers in a manner similar to Scalia's; sometimes the two questioned counsel in seeming coordination.[125]Dahlia Lithwick of Slate described Scalia's technique as follows:
Scalia doesn't come into oral argument all secretive and sphinxlike, feigning indecision on the nuances of the case before him. He comes in like a medieval knight, girded for battle. He knows what the law is. He knows what the opinion should say. And he uses the hour allocated for argument to bludgeon his brethren into agreement.[126]
Scalia wrote numerous opinions from the start of his career on the Supreme Court. During his tenure, he wrote more concurring opinions than any other justice. Only two other justices have written more dissents.[127] According to Kevin Ring, who compiled a book of Scalia's dissenting and concurring opinions: "His opinions are ... highly readable. His entertaining writing style can make even the most mundane areas of the law interesting".[128] Conor Clarke of Slate comments on Scalia's written opinions, especially his dissents:
His writing style is best described as equal parts anger, confidence, and pageantry. Scalia has a taste for garish analogies and offbeat allusions—often very funny ones—and he speaks in no uncertain terms. He is highly accessible and tries not to get bogged down in abstruse legal jargon. But most of all, Scalia's opinions read like they're about to catch fire for pure outrage. He does not, in short, write like a happy man.[129]