I have been digging through lots of articles and remembrances of late and came across this long but very comprehensive New Yorker article from 2005, talking about Justice Scalia's life and philosophy. It captures perfectly my own fascination with Scalia -- an entertaining jurist, with highly principled views (albeit ones he would occasionally ignore when convenient), a fierce conservative, orthodox Catholic, a fellow Italian American, maddening, obnoxious, pointed, witty on a level of someone like Churchill (but with many of Churchill's own drawbacks). He really was an indispensable part of the Court during his tenure, a fixture we should be proud to call our own.

I say this as someone who found little to agree with in many of his opinions or dissents (at least as to the outcome he would prescribe, even as I can acknowledge he often made good points along the way). His reverence for the institution of the Court is unquestionable, in my mind, and so many of his opinions showed his deep concern for maintaining the Court as a true refuge of last resort, an institution that should meddle in laws and politics only as is strictly necessary to preserve the Union.

I also found aspects of some of his opinions and dissents truly distasteful. His dissent in Lawrence v Texas stands out for its meanness and crassness, spending a paragraph about how Americans don't want to associate with the gays or the "homosexual agenda" (an oft-used right wing talk radio code word) and should be entitled to discriminate against them, but then says, in effect, hey I am not passing judgment on gays at all. His intellectual capitulation in Bush v Gore was embarrassing for him, and even he could not come up with an originalist justifications for Brown v Board of Education (he basically said he would have voted for the majority without saying how his philosophy could justify it, which while the right outcome, feels incredibly disingenuous, kind of like saying today you were always rooting for the Broncos to win the Super Bowl but no one could tell if you were before theSuper Bowl).

But as I have friends who are staunch conservatives and libertarians, I can appreciate who Scalia was, his wit and his ability to turn a phrase. He was an American original and while I won't miss his opinions, I will miss him on the Court.
[Post edited by Hood at 02/24/2016 10:30AM]