Justice Antonin Scalia sat on the United States Supreme Court from 1986 until his death in 2016 and used those three decades to argue, more forcefully than any justice of his era, that the Constitution means what its words meant when they were ratified and that statutes mean what their words say. He was the first Italian-American to serve on the Court, and he reshaped how lawyers, judges, and law students approach legal texts, even those who disagreed with nearly every conclusion he reached.
His confirmation in September 1986 was unanimous, 98–0.1Congress.gov. PN1193 – Nomination of Antonin Scalia for The Judiciary, 99th Congress By the time he died, no Supreme Court nomination resembled that vote, in part because of fights he had helped define.
The Philosophy That Drove His Career
Scalia built his jurisprudence on two linked ideas. Originalism held that the Constitution’s meaning was fixed at ratification and that a judge’s job is to find what the words meant to ordinary people at the time, not to update them. He treated the alternative, the “living Constitution,” as a license for judges to impose personal preferences while calling it law. A dead Constitution, he liked to say, was a good thing: it meant your rights couldn’t be taken away because five justices decided times had changed.
Textualism applied the same discipline to statutes. When a law was ambiguous, Scalia argued, judges should look to the text’s plain meaning and the structure of the statute as a whole, not to committee reports or floor speeches. Only the text had passed both chambers and been signed by the president. A senator’s speech was one person’s opinion with no legal force.
He laid these arguments out in his 1997 book A Matter of Interpretation, published by Princeton University Press. The book attacked what he called the “common-law mindset” that treated statutes as flexible material to be reshaped over time. By the end of his career, textualism had moved from a minority position to the dominant approach to statutory interpretation in the federal judiciary.
Majority Opinions That Defined His Legacy
District of Columbia v. Heller
Scalia’s most consequential majority opinion came in 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller. Washington, D.C. had effectively banned handgun possession in the home and required all firearms to be kept disassembled or trigger-locked. Writing for a 5–4 majority, Scalia concluded that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep a firearm for self-defense in the home, independent of any connection to militia service.2Cornell Law School. District of Columbia v. Heller The opinion traced the meaning of “keep and bear Arms” through English legal history, colonial-era statutes, and founding-era commentary. It remains one of the most cited Second Amendment rulings ever issued.
Kyllo v. United States
In Kyllo v. United States (2001), federal agents used a thermal imaging device outside a private home to detect the heat signatures of lamps used to grow marijuana. Scalia wrote for the majority that using technology not in general public use to learn details about the inside of a home is a search under the Fourth Amendment and requires a warrant.3Justia. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) He reasoned that the Fourth Amendment’s protections must keep pace with technology, because the founders would never have accepted the government peering through walls without judicial approval.
Crawford v. Washington
In Crawford v. Washington (2004), Scalia overhauled how courts handle out-of-court statements used against criminal defendants. The previous rule let prosecutors introduce hearsay as long as a judge found it “reliable.” Scalia rejected that framework, holding that the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause requires the prosecution to produce the witness in court for cross-examination whenever the statement is “testimonial,” such as a statement given during police interrogation.4Justia. Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) He wrote that dispensing with confrontation because testimony seems reliable is like dispensing with a jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty.
Employment Division v. Smith
One of his most controversial majority opinions came in Employment Division v. Smith (1990). Two members of the Native American Church were fired and denied unemployment benefits after using peyote, a controlled substance, as part of a religious ceremony. Scalia wrote that the Free Exercise Clause does not exempt individuals from complying with a neutral, generally applicable law, even if that law burdens their religious practice.5Justia. Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990) He argued that allowing religious exemptions from every law would let people do as they pleased simply by citing a religious justification.
The decision drew backlash across the political spectrum. In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by overwhelming margins, specifically to restore the stricter legal test Smith had eliminated.6Congress.gov. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act: A Primer It was a rare instance of Congress effectively overruling a Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution through legislation.
Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife
In Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), Scalia set the modern framework for standing, the threshold question of whether a person has the right to bring a lawsuit in federal court. He wrote that the Constitution requires a plaintiff to show three things: an actual injury, a connection between the injury and the defendant’s conduct, and a likelihood that a favorable ruling would fix the problem.7Justia. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992) The case involved environmental groups challenging a government regulation who struggled to show concrete personal injury. By tightening standing, Scalia made it significantly harder for advocacy organizations to use the courts to challenge government policy.
Dissents That Outlived the Majority
Scalia’s dissents were often more influential than other justices’ majority opinions. He wrote them to persuade future courts, future law students, and the public. Several have been vindicated over time, and even those that have not continue to shape the terms of legal debate.
Morrison v. Olson
His lone dissent in Morrison v. Olson (1988) is widely regarded as one of the greatest dissents in the Court’s history. The case upheld the Independent Counsel Act, which allowed appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate executive branch officials without meaningful presidential oversight. Seven justices voted to uphold the law. Scalia stood alone, arguing the statute was a direct assault on the separation of powers because all executive authority, including the power to prosecute, belongs to the president.8Justia. Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988) He warned that the law created an office with enormous power and virtually no accountability, writing that “this wolf comes as a wolf.” The Independent Counsel Act expired in 1999 after both parties grew disillusioned with it, largely for the reasons he had predicted.
Lawrence v. Texas
When the Court in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) struck down a state law criminalizing private consensual sexual conduct between adults, Scalia dissented. He argued the majority had no constitutional basis for its decision and was picking sides in a cultural debate that belonged in state legislatures.9Justia. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) He accused the Court of using substantive due process as a blank check to create rights not found in the constitutional text. He predicted the decision’s logic would lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage. The prediction proved correct twelve years later.
Obergefell v. Hodges
When that prediction came true in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), Scalia’s dissent was characteristically blunt. He called the majority opinion “the furthest extension one can even imagine” of the Court’s power to create rights the Constitution never mentions, and said the decision robbed the American people of “the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”10Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) His objection was institutional rather than moral. He believed the question of who gets to decide mattered more than the answer.
King v. Burwell
Scalia’s dissent in King v. Burwell (2015) produced two of his most famous phrases. The case turned on whether the Affordable Care Act’s tax credits were available on insurance exchanges established by the federal government, even though the statute’s text referred to exchanges “established by the State.” The majority read the phrase in context and concluded Congress intended the credits to be available everywhere. Scalia was incredulous, writing that “words no longer have meaning” if an exchange not established by a state qualifies as one “established by the State.” He called the majority’s reasoning “pure applesauce” and its interpretive method “jiggery-pokery.”11Legal Information Institute. King v. Burwell The dissent distilled his textualist philosophy: when the words of a statute are clear, judges have no business rewriting them to avoid consequences Congress could have avoided by drafting more carefully.
United States v. Windsor
In United States v. Windsor (2013), the Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Scalia’s dissent focused less on the merits and more on jurisdiction. He argued there was no live controversy because the executive branch had already agreed to give the plaintiff what she wanted, a tax refund. When the government and the plaintiff are on the same side, in his view, there is no genuine dispute, and the Court is issuing an advisory opinion, something the Constitution forbids.12Justia. United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013)
Writing Style and Rhetoric
Scalia was the most quotable justice of his generation, and it was not accidental. He wrote opinions designed to be read by people other than lawyers. Where most judicial prose is cautious and gray, his was vivid and confrontational. He compared the Court’s test for Establishment Clause cases to “a ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried.” He described a subjective legal standard as “the ne plus ultra, the Napoleon Brandy, the Mahatma Gandhi, the Cellophane of subjectivity.” He warned that Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes.”
The style served a strategic purpose. A memorable phrase travels further than a careful paragraph. “Pure applesauce” communicated his contempt for a statutory reading more effectively than ten pages of close analysis could have. His dissents were written for law students, future advocates, and the public, people who might never read a full opinion but would remember the one-liner.
Influence Beyond His Own Votes
Scalia’s reach extended well beyond the cases he decided. During his years teaching at the University of Chicago Law School from 1977 to 1982, he became the first faculty adviser to the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society, the conservative and libertarian legal organization founded in 1982. The Society grew from a small student group into a nationwide network that reshaped judicial selection, legal education, and the pipeline of conservative lawyers into government. His early support helped legitimize originalism during a period when it was treated as a fringe academic position.
His influence on statutory interpretation was arguably even greater than his impact on constitutional law. Before Scalia joined the Court, judges routinely consulted committee reports and floor statements when interpreting ambiguous legislation. By the end of his career, even justices who disagreed with his conclusions had largely accepted his premise that the text comes first. Legal scholars at Stanford observed that the “force of his personality and the power of his pen changed the terms of central legal debates,” noting that lawyers now spend more time with dictionaries and historical texts and less time mining legislative history. That shift happened not because Scalia won every case, because he frequently lost, but because his arguments changed the vocabulary and starting assumptions of everyone around him.
Early Life, Education, and Path to the Court
Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey, the only child of Salvatore Eugene Scalia, a Sicilian immigrant who became a professor of Romance languages at Brooklyn College, and Catherine Panaro, a first-generation Italian-American. He grew up in Queens, New York, in a household he later described as intensely intellectual and devoutly Catholic.
He attended Georgetown University, where he studied history and graduated as class valedictorian in 1957.13Georgetown University. Georgetown Remembers Alumnus and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia He then enrolled at Harvard Law School and earned his law degree magna cum laude in 1960, serving as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
He spent six years in private practice at the Cleveland firm Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis from 1961 to 1967,14U.S. Government Publishing Office. Nomination of Judge Antonin Scalia – Biographical Information then taught administrative law at the University of Virginia until 1971. The 1970s pulled him into government service, culminating in his appointment as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1974 to 1977, the executive branch’s chief internal legal adviser on constitutional questions.15American Academy in Berlin. Antonin Scalia After the Carter administration arrived, he returned to academia at the University of Chicago, and in 1982 President Reagan appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In 1986, when Reagan elevated William Rehnquist from Associate Justice to Chief Justice, Scalia was nominated to fill the resulting vacancy. The Senate confirmed him 98–0 on September 17, 1986.1Congress.gov. PN1193 – Nomination of Antonin Scalia for The Judiciary, 99th Congress He was the first Italian-American ever nominated to the Court.14U.S. Government Publishing Office. Nomination of Judge Antonin Scalia – Biographical Information
Scalia married Maureen McCarthy on September 10, 1960, shortly after graduating from law school. They had nine children. His most celebrated personal relationship on the Court was his friendship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, his ideological opposite, with whom he had served on the D.C. Circuit and shared a love of opera. Ginsburg later said Scalia’s dissents made her own majority opinions stronger: “He nailed all the weak spots and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion.”
His Death and the Vacancy That Followed
Scalia died on February 13, 2016, at Cibolo Creek Ranch, a remote resort in West Texas, when he did not appear for breakfast.16C-SPAN. Death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia17Supreme Court of the United States. Statements from the Supreme Court Regarding the Death of Justice Antonin Scalia His death during the final year of President Obama’s second term triggered one of the most consequential political confrontations in modern Supreme Court history. Within hours, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the Senate would not consider any nominee until after the presidential election. President Obama nominated federal appeals judge Merrick Garland in March 2016, but the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republican members refused to hold hearings or a vote.
The seat remained vacant for over a year. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, he nominated Neil Gorsuch on January 31, 2017. Gorsuch was confirmed on April 7, 2017, filling the seat Scalia had held. The episode permanently altered the politics of Supreme Court confirmations. The intensity of the fight was itself a measure of how much Scalia’s seat mattered. Few vacancies in American history have been so fiercely contested, because few justices had so thoroughly defined what their side of the Court stood for.