46 Facts About Antonin Scalia

1. Antonin 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.

2. Antonin Scalia 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.

3. Antonin Scalia espoused a conservative jurisprudence and ideology, advocating textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation.

4. Antonin Scalia peppered his colleagues with "Ninograms"—memos named for his nickname "Nino"—intending to persuade them to his point of view.

5. Furthermore, Antonin Scalia viewed affirmative action and other policies that afforded special protected status to minority groups as unconstitutional.

6. Antonin Scalia filed separate opinions in many cases, often castigating the Court's majority—sometimes scathingly so.

7. Antonin Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey, and was an only child.

8. In 1953, Antonin Scalia enrolled at Georgetown University, where he majored in history.

9. Antonin Scalia became a champion collegiate debater in Georgetown's Philodemic Society and a critically praised thespian.

10. Antonin Scalia took his junior year abroad in Switzerland at the University of Fribourg.

11. Antonin Scalia began his legal career at the law firm Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked from 1961 to 1967.

12. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in November 1980, Antonin Scalia hoped for a major position in the new administration.

13. Antonin Scalia was offered a judgeship on the Chicago-based US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in early 1982 but declined it, hoping to be appointed to the more influential US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

14. Antonin Scalia was confirmed by the US Senate on August 5, 1982, and was sworn in on August 17, 1982.

15. Antonin Scalia indicated that the law was an unwarranted encroachment on the executive branch by the legislative.

16. Antonin Scalia dissented, stating that the issuance of the Guidelines was a lawmaking function that Congress could not delegate and dubbed the Commission "a sort of junior-varsity Congress".

17. Antonin Scalia opined that the AUMF 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".

18. In March 2006, Antonin Scalia gave a talk at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

19. Antonin Scalia based that decision on Wickard v Filburn, which he now wrote "expanded the Commerce Clause beyond all reason".

20. Antonin Scalia concurred only in part, writing, "Justice O'Connor's assertion, that a 'fundamental rule of judicial restraint' requires us to avoid reconsidering Roe cannot be taken seriously".

21. Antonin Scalia 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.

22. Antonin 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".

23. Antonin 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.

24. Antonin Scalia 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".

25. Antonin 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.

26. Antonin 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".

27. University of Kansas social psychologist Lawrence Wrightsman wrote that Antonin Scalia communicated "a sense of urgency on the bench" and had a style that was "forever forceful".

28. Antonin Scalia comes in like a medieval knight, girded for battle.

29. Antonin Scalia wrote numerous opinions from the start of his career on the Supreme Court.

30. Antonin Scalia's writing style is best described as equal parts anger, confidence, and pageantry.

31. Antonin Scalia is highly accessible and tries not to get bogged down in abstruse legal jargon.

32. Antonin Scalia attempted to influence his colleagues by sending them "Ninograms"—short memoranda aimed at persuading them of the correctness of his views.

33. Antonin Scalia was a textualist in statutory interpretation, believing that the ordinary meaning of a statute should govern.

34. Antonin Scalia warned that if one accepted that constitutional standards should evolve with a maturing society, "the risk of assessing evolving standards is that it is all too easy to believe that evolution has culminated in one's own views".

35. Antonin Scalia compared the Constitution to statutes he contended were not understood to change their meaning through time.

36. Antonin Scalia described himself as an originalist, meaning that he interpreted the United States Constitution as it would have been understood when it was adopted.

37. Constitutional amendments, such as the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment, according to Antonin Scalia, were to be interpreted based on their meaning at the time of ratification.

38. Antonin Scalia responded to his critics that his originalism "has occasionally led him to decisions he deplores, like his upholding the constitutionality of flag burning", which according to Antonin Scalia was protected by the First Amendment.

39. Antonin Scalia enjoyed a warm friendship with fellow Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, considered a member of the court's liberal wing, with the two attending the opera together and appearing together onstage as supernumeraries in Washington National Opera's 1994 production of Ariadne auf Naxos.

40. When Justice David Souter retired, Antonin Scalia told David Axelrod, an adviser to then-President Barack Obama, that he hoped that Obama would nominate Kagan to replace him.

41. An avid hunter, Antonin Scalia taught Justice Kagan how to hunt; the two hunted ducks, birds, deer and antelope together.

42. Antonin Scalia's remains were interred at a private ceremony at Fairfax Memorial Park in Fairfax, Virginia.

43. Antonin Scalia traveled to the nation's law schools, giving talks on law and democracy.

44. In 2009, after nearly a quarter century on the Court, Antonin Scalia characterized his victories as "damn few".

45. Justice Clarence Thomas said, "'Justice Antonin Scalia was a good man; a wonderful husband who loved his wife and his family; a man of strong faith; a towering intellect; a legal giant; and a dear, dear friend.

46. Justice Antonin Scalia nailed all the weak spots—the "applesauce" and "argle bargle"—and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion.