In Memoriam: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia 1936 - 2016

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 41 No. 1
• Publication year: 2016
• Author: James C. Roberts III
• topic: Intellectual Property

In Memoriam: Supreme Court Justice ANTONIN SCALIA 1936 - 2016

JUSTICE SCALIA REMEMBERED: THE NOW-HAZY HALCYON DAYS WITH PROFESSOR SCALIA

James C. Roberts III

Global Capital Law Group PC

While poring over the digital versions of mounds of encomiums for Antonin Scalia I was struck by one of my few memories of him as Professor Scalia: judge Six-pack.

With this dim memory in hand I reached out to a few of my University of Chicago classmates for their recollections. No one knew if Scalia created that imaginary jurist but everyone recalled that he often used the humble metaphor. Scalia was trying to get us to start our legal analysis at the quotidian base that makes up our lives: not every judge is a Marshall, Holmes, or Jackson. judges are usually pretty straightforward people.

My own recollection was that judge Six-pack was described this way: he would come home from work, kiss his wife and kids, have dinner, and settle in to watch the hockey game and have a few brews. One of my classmates recounted this story about our humble judge:

Professor Scalia would go through a set of facts and then call on a student: "Ms. Smith, you are judge Six-pack. How would you rule?"

I have no doubt that the legal point escaped us as we were all too busy imagining "Ms. Smith" having six beers or even watching hockey, for that matter. But our simple judge was an instructive technique for Scalia to use. (judge Six-pack's occasional appearance in class did not improve my view of hockey.)

judge Six-pack was the "everyman," a model for us to remember that every judge is a human being, and is a model that affects - and should affect - the opinions at the foundation of stare decisis. The judge Six-pack that I remember went a bit further as Scalia's heuristic tool: law serves every human being, not just the holy order of well-trained lawyers with a pen armed with ready bons-mots.

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Notwithstanding Scalia's assertions of an unchanging...