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Source: CNN

By Jamie Gangel, Bill Mears, Evan Perez and Kevin Bohn

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died at the age of 79, a government source and family friend told CNN on Saturday.

The first Italian-American to sit on the nation’s highest court, Scalia was a conservative in thought, but not in personality.
The jaunty jurist was able to light up, or ignite, a room with his often brash demeanor and wicked sense of humor, grounded always in a profound respect for American law and its constitutional traditions.

“What can I say,” was a favorite phrase of the man colleagues knew as “Nino.” As it turned out, quite a lot.

“Justice Scalia had an irrepressibly pugnacious personality,” said Edward Lazarus, a former Supreme Clerk law clerk who wrote about the experience in “Closed Chambers.”

“And even in his early years of the Court, that came out at oral argument when he was the most aggressive questioner. And behind the scenes, where the memos he would write– what were called ‘Ninograms’– inside the court had a real galvanizing effect on the debate among the justices.”

A sharp mind combined with a sharp pen allowed Scalia to make his point, both to the pleasure and disappointment of his colleagues and the public.

“He could be belligerent, he was obviously very candid about he felt about things,” said Joan Biskupic, a USA Today reporter who wrote a biography of Scalia. “He loved to call it as he saw it, completely not politically correct. In fact, he prided himself on not being PC on the bench in court.”

His New York and Mediterranean roots — “I’m an Italian from Queens” he was fond of saying– helped fashion a love of words and debate, combining street smarts with a well-calculated conservative view of the law and its limits on society.

“He was very good with audiences that weren’t predisposed to like him,” said Paul Clement, a former Scalia law clerk. “He was incredibly disarming and charming in his own way.”

Former CNN Supreme Court Correspondent Bill Mears researched and wrote much of this obituary prior to Justice Scalia’s death. CNN’s Steve Almasy and Kevin Bohn contributed to this report.

Reference

Antonin Gregory Scalia (ⁱ/skəˈliːə/; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016^[1][2]) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice on the Court, Scalia was the Senior Associate Justice. Appointed to the Court byPresident Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia has been described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the Court’s conservative wing.^[3]

Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and attended public grade school and Catholic high school in New York City, where his family had moved. He attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate and obtained his LL.B degree from Harvard Law School. After spending six years in a Cleveland law firm, he became a law school professor at the University of Virginia. In the early 1970s, he served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, first at minor administrative agencies, and then as an assistant attorney general. He spent most of the Carter years teaching at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the first faculty advisers of the fledgling Federalist Society. In 1982, he was appointed as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Ronald Reagan.

In 1986, Scalia was appointed by Reagan to the Supreme Court to fill the associate justice seat vacated when Justice William Rehnquist was elevated to Chief Justice. Whereas Rehnquist’s confirmation was contentious, Scalia was asked few difficult questions by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and faced no opposition. Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, becoming the first Italian-American justice.^[4]

The Justice did not report feeling ill and retired to his room after dinner. The source, who was traveling with Scalia, told ABC-7 an El Paso priest has been called to Marfa.

Scalia was the longest-serving current Justice on the Supreme Court. He was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.