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The Daily Signal
What Scalia
Taught Us
Paul J. Larkin Jr.
February 13, 2016
For conservatives, it is the loss of a standard-bearer and icon. For
liberals, it is the loss of an opponent who always fought hard but fair.
For those who never had the opportunity to know him, it is the loss of
one of our greatest legal minds, of a judge and justice who had made,
and will continue to make, legal history. And to those who were
privileged to know him, it is the loss of a wonderful human being.
More than 100 men and women have been justices of the Supreme Court.
All decided the outcome of individual cases and made small changes in
the law.
Few changed its course.
Some—such as Joseph Story, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hugo Black, Earl
Warren, William Brennan, and William Rehnquist—will be remembered for
moving the Supreme Court in one direction or another.
They launched the court into its existence as an institution. They
addressed some of the most important issues that can arise under our
Constitution—issues involving the separation of powers, freedom of
speech and religion, the integrity of the criminal justice process, and
the relationship between government and the nation. They established
the Supreme Court—rightly or wrongly—as one of the most powerful
institutions in our nation. Their tenure still has a powerful effect
today.
But even fewer justices changed the course of the law. John Marshall
was one. Antonin Scalia was another.
Scalia taught us that the law matters, that the law is the written
word, and that the written word takes its meaning from how history
understands it, not what we wish it might mean.
For him, the law was a tablet whose meaning could be discerned by
focusing on the meaning of the words it contained, rather than by
asking ourselves what we want it to mean. The latter, he said, was the
stuff of politics, not law, and he drew a line in the sand between the
two.
He maintained that view of a judge’s role even when it was
unfashionable to hold that belief because it may lead to outcomes we
may not like. But he believed that it was his duty to uphold the rule
of law, because only that rule separated us from the many nations on
the Earth governed by the rule of might.
Robert F. Kennedy once said that the privilege of public service
carried with it the opportunity to bend history.
Not only did Antonin Scalia bend it; he turned it in a different
direction. We will be forever grateful to him for that. Requiescat in
pace.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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