CONSERVATIVE CHAMPION DIES
Death of Justice Antonin Scalia sets up ideological showdown between Obama, Republicans for control of Supreme Court
WASHINGTON Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, the outspoken leader of the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc, was found dead at a Texas ranch Saturday morning.
“I am saddened to report that our colleague Justice Antonin Scalia has passed away,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement Saturday afternoon. “He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues. His passing is a great loss to the court and the country he so loyally served.”
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said President Obama had been informed of Scalia’s death and extended “deepest condolences” to his family.
The flag outside the Supreme Court was lowered to half mast.
The death was first reported on the website of the San Antonio Express
News, which quoted an unnamed federal official saying the justice apparently died of natural causes. Scalia, 79, had spent Friday quail hunting at Cibolo Creek Ranch, then went to bed. When he didn’t appear for breakfast Saturday, a person went to his room and found a body.
Over nearly three decades on the high court, Scalia’s sharp intellect and acerbic opinions made him a hero to conserva-
tives and a target for liberals. Yet he also was a close friend to a leader of the court’s liberal wing, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a 2016 Republican presidential hopeful and himself a former clerk on the Supreme Court, posted a statement on Facebook mourning the death of “one of the greatest justices in history.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the justice “the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution.”
Obama could nominate a candidate to fill the vacancy, but winning confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate in an election year would be difficult, if not impossible.
APPOINTED BY REAGAN
Scalia managed to steer the federal judiciary toward his twin theories of “originalism” and “textualism” — strictly reading the Constitution and federal statutes to mean what their authors intended, and nothing more. Yet he leaves with more disappointments than achievements and a legacy written in acerbic dissents.
The first Italian-American to serve on the court when he was named by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, “Nino” Scalia established himself as a firm opponent of abortion, gay rights and racial preferences. He was the lone dissenter when the court opened the Virginia Military Institute to women and consistently opposed affirmative action policies at universities and workplaces.
On the winning side of the ledger, Scalia was best known for authoring the court’s 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller upholding the right of citizens to keep guns at home for self-defense. The 5-4 decision, he said, was “the most complete originalist opinion that I’ve ever written.”
But Scalia’s sharp-elbows brand of conservatism more often showed up in testily worded dissents and even what The New York Times labeled “furious concurrences,” in which he agreed with the end result but ranted about the reasoning.
“Dissents are where you can really say what you believe and say it with the force you think it deserves,” he said. And if they prove correct years later, he went on, it “makes you feel good.”
That was the case in Morrison v. Olson, in which the court upheld Congress’ establishment of an independent counsel within the executive branch but beyond the president’s control. In time, many conservatives and liberals came to distrust the power given to independent counsels, including Kenneth Starr, whose four-year investigation of President Clinton culminated in his impeachment. Congress let the law expire in 1999.
NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER
Scalia opposed the president and favored Congress in the more recent test of Obama’s recess appointments power. While agreeing with the court’s majority that Obama exceeded his authority by going around the Senate to name members to the National Labor Relations Board, Scalia argued that such power should be limited far more than the court allowed.
“The majority practically bends over backward to ensure that recess appointments will remain a powerful weapon in the president’s arsenal,” he wrote. “That is unfortunate, because the recess appointment power is an anachronism.”
Never one to compromise his principles, Scalia spent his career on the court watching as its moderate members — Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and, later, Anthony Kennedy — cut the deals that led to majority opinions on issues such as abortion and gay rights.
His objections, he said recently, were not based on policy views but on “who decides”— and his answer almost invariably was the Constitution, the Congress or the president, not unelected judges with lifetime appointments like himself.
POPULAR WITH COLLEAGUES
Scalia maintained close friendships with liberals such as Elena Kagan and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with whom he bonded in the 1980s when they served together on a federal appeals court.
“If you can’t disagree on the law without taking it personally,” Scalia was fond of saying, “find another day job.”