Scalia, Antonin (1936–)

• Author: Rayman L. Solomon
• Pages: 2312-2315

Page 2312

Associate Justice Antonin "Nino" Scalia became the 103rd Justice of the United States Supreme Court on September 27, 1986. Justice Scalia came to the Court after a distinguished career in law, teaching, government, and as a federal appellate judge. He is the first Italian American to be appointed to the Court and was second of three conservative Supreme Court Justices appointed by President RONALD REAGAN. Scalia has established himself as an out-spoken proponent of a jurisprudence that is profoundly at odds with the jurisprudence of later twentieth century LIBERALISM (i.e., the liberalism of the WARREN COURT) and differs in significant detail from current judicial conservatism of the role it assigns the judiciary. Before analyzing this jurisprudence, it is important to place it in the context of Scalia's life and professional career, both of which had revealed him as an articulate exponent of political CONSERVATIVE opinions.

Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on March 11, 1936, the only child of Italian immigrant parents. The family moved later to Queens, New York, where Scalia's father, S. Eugene Scalia, was a college professor, and his mother, Catherine Louise Panaro Scalia, was an elementary school teacher. S. Eugene Scalia was a scholar of romance language and literature who wrote several monographs on Italian literary history and criticism and translated Italian works into English. Antonin Scalia was a brilliant student. He graduated first in his class at a Manhattan Jesuit military academy, Xavier High School, and then repeated that accomplishment at Georgetown University, from which he graduated in 1957. He attended Harvard Law School, where he again excelled scholastically and was elected Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation he entered practice with Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis in Cleveland. He practiced corporate law with the firm until 1967, when he declined a partnership offer. Instead, he accepted a position on the faculty of the University of Virginia Law School.

At Virginia, Scalia began, both through his teaching and research, to develop a specialty in ADMINISTRATIVE LAW. He published several articles critical of procedural aspects of federal agencies before leaving Virginia to work in Washington, D.C. Scalia's conservative political orientation, which friends and colleagues identify as having been held by him consistently since college, led him to leave teaching to accept several positions in the administration of President RICHARD M. NIXON. He first served as general counsel in the executive office of telecommunications policy and then was appointed chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States. The conference is responsible for studying common legal and management issues affecting federal executive branch agencies and for recommending improvements in administrative procedures. Scalia next became embroiled in the political battles of WATERGATE when he moved to the Department of Justice in the summer of 1974 as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, the office that provides legal advice to the President. Among Scalia's first duties was drafting a defense of the President's claim that the tapes and records that Congress sought were his property, not the government's, and that they were protected from congressional subpoena by EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE. After Nixon's resignation, following the Supreme Court's rejection of his argument, Scalia remained at the Justice Department until January 1977 when President GERALD R. FORD left office. He subsequently spent six months at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization, and then accepted a position as a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law.

Scalia taught at Chicago until his appointment to the federal appellate court bench in 1982. (He served one year as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School.) During his time at Chicago, Scalia established himself as a leading voice among conservative academics. He continued to write and teach in the area of administrative law, and he edited the American Enterprise Institute's journal Regulation, which was largely devoted to attacking regulatory excesses and advocating deregulation. Scalia also attacked judicial inattention to the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act?most notably, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia's review of the work of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. case (1978). From 1981 to 1982 Scalia served as chair of the administrative law section of the American Bar Association, and he used his office to call for lawyers to become involved in reforming administrative procedure to make it fit the new...