Antonin Scalia
On February 13, 2016, Antonin Scalia died at Cibolo Creek Ranch, closing a career that had placed him at the center of American legal life for decades. Born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey, Scalia was a United States citizen who worked across multiple roles in law and academia, serving as a judge, lawyer, jurist, and professor over the course of his professional life.
Scalia's formal education began at Xavier High School, after which he attended Georgetown University College of Arts and Sciences before pursuing legal training at Harvard Law School. He also studied at the University of Fribourg. His career brought him into association with two distinct jurisprudential movements: originalism, which interprets legal texts according to their understood meaning at the time of enactment, and textualism, which focuses on the plain language of statutes as the primary guide to their application. These orientations shaped his approach throughout his tenure on the bench. Over the course of his career, he also worked as a professor, contributing to legal education alongside his judicial responsibilities.
Scalia received a number of formal recognitions during his lifetime. He was awarded the Golden Plate Award, the Francis Boyer Award, the James Cardinal Gibbons Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was also inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. These honors spanned civic, academic, and governmental spheres, reflecting the range of his activities as a public figure in American law. His death at Cibolo Creek Ranch in February 2016 came while he was still serving in his judicial capacity, marking the end of a career defined by his association with originalism and textualism.
Quotes by Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia's insights on:
I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.
Winning and losing, that's never been my objective. It's my hope that in the fullness of time, the majority of the court will come to see things as I do.
Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It can do anything - it can stop the Vietnam War, it can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.
The only way to eliminate any government choice on what art is worthwhile, what art isn't worthwhile, is to get the government totally out of the business of funding.
Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best. Individuals on both sides of the issue passionately, but respectfully, attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views.
I spent my junior year in Switzerland. On the way back home, I spent some time in England, and I remember going to Hyde Park Corner. And there was a Roman Catholic priest in his collar, standing on a soapbox, preaching the Catholic faith and being heckled by a group. And I thought, 'My goodness.' I thought that was admirable.
I'm nervous about our civic culture. I'm not sure the Internet is largely the cause of it. It's certainly the cause of careless writing. People who get used to blurbing things on the Internet are never going to be good writers.
Because values change, legislatures abolish the death penalty, permit same-sex marriage if they want, abolish laws against homosexual conduct. That's how the change in a society occurs. Society doesn't change through a Constitution.
If you condemn someone who has committed a crime to be tortured, that would be unconstitutional.
It is not rational, never mind 'appropriate,' to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.