Scalia, Antonin

Scalia, Antonin, 1936–, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1986–), b. Trenton, N.J. He graduated from Harvard Law School (1960) and subsequently taught law at the Univ. of Virginia (1967–71) and the Univ. of Chicago (1977–82). In 1982, President Reagan named him to the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and four years later he was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, taking the seat vacated when William Rehnquist ascended to the position of chief justice. An outspoken conservative, Scalia is a prominent proponent of “textualism,” the idea that one should focus on the text of the U.S. constitution or a law and its original meaning when seeking to interpret it, and that decisions of judges should be based on that original meaning, a position most concisely enunciated in A Matter of Interpretation (1997). He has been willing to overturn (often liberal) precedents, and with Rehnquist (until 2005) and Clarence Thomas (from 1991), formed the Court's right wing. Scalia has, however, sometimes taken more libertarian positions, protecting flag burning as a form of free speech, for example.