U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the most aggressive and consistent defender on the post-World War II-era Supreme Court of the primacy of the text of the Constitution. He was the modern-day progenitor of the idea—and eventually the jurisprudence—of interpreting the Constitution faithful to the plain meaning of its words. He was utterly and unambiguously faithful to this concept, a theory of constitutional interpretation that has two names, textualism and originalism. And his textualism/originalism arguments provoked a firestorm of opposition on the Court and in the legal academy, notes Andrew Napolitano, who considered Scalia a personal friend.
Some justices throughout history have been compromisers and conciliators, but not Justice Scalia, writes Napolitano. He was a lion of textual orthodoxy. He was a rock of original meaning. Law students jokingly called him the pope of originalism, a phrase he loved.
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