Antonin Scalia

Antonin Gregory Scalia March 11 1936 February 13 2016 was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016 He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the Courts conservative wing For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018 and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor Scalia was born in Trenton New Jersey A devout Catholic he attended the Jesuit Xavier High School before receiving his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University Scalia went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and spent six years at Jones Day before becoming a law professor at the University of Virginia In the early 1970s he served in the Nixon and Ford administrations eventually becoming an assistant attorney general under President Gerald Ford He spent most of the Carter years teaching at the University of Chicago where he became one of the first faculty advisers of the fledgling Federalist Society In 1982 President Ronald Reagan appointed Scalia as a judge of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Four years later Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court where Scalia became its first ItalianAmerican justice following a unanimous confirmation by the US Senate 980 Scalia espoused a conservative jurisprudence and ideology advocating textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation He peppered his colleagues with Ninograms memos named for his nickname Nino intending to persuade them to his point of view He was a strong defender of the powers of the executive branch and believed that the US Constitution permitted the death penalty and did not guarantee the right to either abortion or samesex marriage Furthermore Scalia viewed affirmative action and other policies that afforded special protected status to minority groups 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 Courts majoritysometimes scathingly so Scalias most significant opinions include his lone dissent in Morrison v Olson arguing against the constitutionality of an IndependentCounsel law and his majority opinions in Crawford v Washington defining a criminal defendants confrontation right under the Sixth Amendment and District of Columbia v Heller holding that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees an individual right to handgun ownership Description above from the Wikipedia article Antonin Scalia licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia