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American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, by Joan Biskupic
Ebook American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, by Joan Biskupic
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The first full-scale biography of the Supreme Court’s most provocative—and influential—justice
If the U.S. Supreme Court teaches us anything, it is that almost everything is open to interpretation. Almost. But what’s inarguable is that, while the Court has witnessed a succession of larger-than-life jurists in its two-hundred-year-plus history, it has never seen the likes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Combative yet captivating, infuriating yet charming, the outspoken jurist remains a source of curiosity to observers across the political spectrum and on both sides of the ideological divide. And after nearly a quarter century on the bench, Scalia may be at the apex of his power. Agree with him or not, Scalia is “the justice who has had the most important impact over the years on how we think and talk about the law,” as the Harvard law dean Elena Kagan, now U.S. Solicitor General, once put it.
Scalia electrifies audiences: to hear him speak is to remember him; to read his writing is to find his phrases permanently affixed in one’s mind. But for all his public grandstanding, Scalia has managed to elude biographers—until now. In American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the veteran Washington journalist Joan Biskupic presents for the first time a detailed portrait of this complicated figure and provides a comprehensive narrative that will engage Scalia’s adherents and critics alike. Drawing on her long tenure covering the Court, and on unprecedented access to the justice, Biskupic delves into the circumstances of his rise and the formation of his rigorous approach to the bench. Beginning with the influence of Scalia’s childhood in a first-generation Italian American home, American Original takes us through his formative years, his role in the Nixon-Ford administrations, and his trajectory through the Reagan revolution. Biskupic’s careful reporting culminates with the tumult of the contemporary Supreme Court—where it was and where it’s going, with Scalia helping to lead the charge.
Even as Democrats control the current executive and legislative branches, the judicial branch remains rooted in conservatism. President Obama will likely appoint several new justices to the Court—but it could be years before those appointees change the tenor of the law. With his keen mind, authoritarian bent, and contentious rhetorical style, Scalia is a distinct and persuasive presence, and his tenure is far from over. This new book shows us the man in power: his world, his journey, and the far-reaching consequences of the transformed legal landscape.
- Sales Rank: #484334 in Books
- Published on: 2009-11-10
- Released on: 2009-11-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.32" h x 1.49" w x 6.38" l, 1.50 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 448 pages
From Publishers Weekly
The combative personality of conservative judicial firebrand Antonin Scalia comes through more clearly than his philosophy in this dense biography. USA Today legal affairs reporter Biskupic (Sandra Day O'Connor) notes Scalia's contemptuous chin-flicking at the media and relaxed attitude toward torture and other controversies, but focuses on his Supreme Court tenure through a thematic survey of prominent cases. What fitfully emerges, apart from a man confident in his views, hot in his rhetoric, is his hostility to affirmative action, abortion rights and the 'homosexual agenda' and a fondness for states' rights, executive branch authority and gun-owners' rights, all justified by an originalist interpretation that hews to the bare text of the Constitution as its authors allegedly understood it. Biskupic's critical approach highlights inconsistencies in Scalia's reasoning, particularly when he went against his usual states' rights position in the Bush v. Gore decision, which settled the 2000 presidential election. But the complex, murky vagaries of Supreme Court case law are not the best format for elucidating a judicial philosophy; Biskupic gives a full account of this influential figure's doctrinaire conservatism, but the originalist doctrine itself is harder to discern. 8 pages of b&w illus. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Legal affairs reporter Biskupic brings 20 years’ experience and insight to providing a broad context to this profile of the most prominent and controversial of the current Supreme Court justices. Bright, articulate, and often confrontational, Scalia had promoted his concept of originalism, interpreting the Constitution from the original perspective of the Founding Fathers rather than as a living document adapting to contemporary circumstances. Initially, Scalia was limited to presenting his cogent and often bombastic arguments from a minority dissenter’s view, but with the appointment of conservative John Roberts as chief, some 20 years into his tenure Scalia now finds himself more often on the majority side. Yet his persona continues to mark him as an outsider. Biskupic examines Scalia’s life, including how he has come to hold his views. This is a must-read for those interested in the impact of a singular personality on our highest court—and to what end, only time will tell. --Vernon Ford
Review
“Joan Biskupic has done it again. Having hit a home run in her fine biography of the quintessential centrist justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, Biskupic has now hit it far out of the park with her elegant, insightful, and eminently readable account of the life and constitutional views of the most colorful justice on the Supreme Court’s right wing. For anyone who wants to understand the most influential and interesting voice of the most powerful movement in contemporary American law, this book is a must-read.” —Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard Law School
“Biskupic is an old-fashioned reporter’s reporter—hard-digging, tough-minded, but even-handed. She is also a thoughtful and shrewd judge of people. She has penetrated the Supreme Court and given us a fascinating portrait of the court’s most colorful and human justice.” —Evan Thomas, editor, Newsweek
“This is the best judicial biography I’ve ever read. Scalia, the lodestone of the modern Court, is complex, influential, difficult, and, above all—in these pages—alive.” —Richard Ben Cramer, author of Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life“It’s hard to write a fair-minded biography of such a polarizing figure, but that’s what Joan Biskupic has done with ‘American Original’ . . . impressively balanced and well reported.” —Jeffrey Rosen, The New York Times Book Review “[American Original] will stand up over time.” —Emily Bazelon, Slate “Intellectually rigorous. . . ‘American Original: the Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’ is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand this jurist.” —Claude R. Marx, Boston Globe “Biskupic has written a biography filled with fire, a book almost certain to anger Scalia's fans on many pages because she offers candid assessments of his flaws, as well as his strengths. Scalia’s detractors will find lots of material with which to demonize him even further.” —Steve Weinberg, Dallas Morning News “A gifted storyteller . . . Biskupic is tough but fair. At age 73, Scalia remains full of piss and vinegar. If you want to know where he’s likely to take his colleagues and when they’ll refuse to go along with him pick up ‘American Original.’ Don’t wait for a court order.” —Glenn C. Altschuler, Tulsa World “Impeccably researched.” —Gene Warner, Buffalo News “‘American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’ is full of strong reporting. It is scrupulously even-handed, which may irritate partisans on both sides of the Scalia divide—there are few fence-straddlers when it comes to him . . . Biskupic’s larger accomplishment is to present the recent evolution of the Supreme Court through the prism of its most colorful member.”—Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times “It’s worth checking out Joan Biskupic’s new biography of Justice Antonin Scalia—American Original. . . It’s the first real deep dive into his personal background (including his religion) and how it affects his decisions. Scalia is a critical figure on the Supreme Court, given its continuing shift to the right. And Biskupic does a great job in helping the reader understand where he’s coming from.” —Thomas Goldstein, Daily Beast, “Smart People Recommend” “The book’s real charm, however, lies in her treatment of the man. She traces the important influences on Scalia—the lessons from his immigrant parents, the centrality of his Catholic faith, the early professional experiences in the Nixon justice department—and offers a portrait of a man quite unlike any other judge. Especially against the decorous backdrop of the Supreme Court, Scalia stands out for his brashness in argument, his clever, sometimes contemptuous, prose and his willingness to express opinions in a variety of public forums. Biskupic acknowledges his intellectual brilliance but criticizes him for his tetchiness with the press, for his seeming inability to concede at least the appearance of conflicts of interest and for his willingness to depart from originalism—Bush v. Gore, anyone?—when it appears to serve his own political inclinations. Legal scholars have written more about Scalia than any other living Justice. Now, in terms of accessibility for the general reader, Biskupic gives the rest of us an inside look at what the fuss is all about . . . Every bit as provocative and entertaining as the man himself.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Most helpful customer reviews
97 of 105 people found the following review helpful.
Not Much Life Story
By Jeff Kelleher
If this first-ever biography of the colorful and prickly Associate Justice were a New Yorker profile, it would merit four stars; if an Atlantic Monthly feature, three. It is an accessible and compact survey of Scalia's public writings and pronouncements, and of public commentary on them. But as biography, it is disappointing.
Biskupic devotes only 21 pages to the first 38 years of her subject's life--the very period the reader is most curious about. How can this be called biography? Compare the first volume of Robert Caro's life of Lyndon Johnson-- 800 deeply illuminating pages on Johnson's first 33 years.
The book offers few glimpses of the influences that shaped Scalia's thought and temperament. Who were the teachers, priests, and professors who taught him? What courses did he take, books did he read, bull sessions did he attend, course papers and letters did he write? He did years of ROTC in school but never served in the military; why not? He spent his junior year at Switzerland's University of Fribourg in what Biskupic calls "a yearlong academic and sightseeing feast." That feastful year gets 43 words.
What was his work during his six years at the law firm of Jones, Day? Hardly a word on this. His four years as a professor at the University of Virginia get only glancing coverage.
The book is drawn almost entirely from published sources. The author did interview the Justice himself several times, and a scattering of family and acquaintances, but collectively these interviews add only the faintest coloration to the public record. Most of Scalia's friends, classmates, and colleagues are still alive, and so loquacious a man certainly has left a lot of private writings and utterances scattered about. But Biskupic did not bother to do the hard digging necessary to uncover them. She worked libraries, not the streets.
Biskupic surmises, casually and obviously, that his view of Roe v. Wade might have been shaped by his Catholic faith; and that his view of the District of Columbia's gun ban might have been influenced by his lifelong hunting hobby. Hardly profound.
Two speculations are particularly tantalizing. First, Scalia's literalist "originalism" in constitutional interpretation has a parallel in the literalist catechism of the Catholic Church. Second, as a law student he was taken with Herbert Wechsler's doctrine of "neutral principles" of constitutional law--the notion that judges should decide by applying transcendent principles that are detached from the outcome in a particular case. Both of these beg for elaboration, but Biskupic simply tosses them into a paragraph or two and moves on.
If you want a refresher on recent constitutional struggles, as expressed in Scalia's opinions, speeches, and writings, this is a useful book. If you are looking for illuminating biography, you will find, on finishing it, that you have learned almost nothing that was not already extant.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Not quite a liberal hit-piece, but close
By Happy Shopper
I bought this book hoping to learn more about Antonin Scalia after his passing. I had a lot of admiration for the things Mr. Scalia had said and done on the SCOTUS, and I was really looking forward to reading American Original. After reading the book, I must say that I was very disappointed with the book and the point of view of the author.
The book is not a complete "hit" piece (hence the 2 starts) on Mr. Scalia, but it is very close. It is obvious that Ms. Biskupic disagrees with most of the positions that Mr. Scalia (and other conservatives) hold and she continually expounds on how Mr. Scalia is not in sync with where the country should be headed. As an example, on page 162 regarding Robert Bork and his resignation from the D.C. Circuit, Ms. Biskupic writes, "When Bork resigned, the Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who had opposed his nomination, said, 'The right wing lost the constitutional referendum of 1987. That is what galls them [conservatives] most about the loss of Robert Bork. Not pity for a man who long wanted to serve on the Court and whose credentials were so superb. It is pity for an agenda that was dramatically, decisively repudiated.'" This comment seems a bit extreme considering the “agenda” of President’s George H.W. Bush (41) in 1988 and George W. Bush (43) in 2000.
On page 184, where she is writing on race relations, Ms. Biskupic says, "(Mr. Scalia) challenged the long-standing argument that special protection should be given to the disenfranchised and disadvantaged. In that view, some critics argued, he was abandoning the core responsibilities of courts in America because the neutral rules he advocated could not bring about racial equality." Again, Ms. Biskupic is using the thoughts and concerns of others to express her agenda. Many people believe that it is not a court's responsibility to bring about racial equality or any other change in society. Courts are not supposed to make laws - they are supposed to interpret them.
On page 189, Ms. Biskupic writes, "...news reports of the event [Scalia’s 1996 appearance before the Christian Legal Society] were grist for critics who thought that, in a nation founded on the separation of church and state, Scalia had gone too far in his personal identification with religious believers." Ms. Biskupic is one of many who propagate the lie that the United States was “founded on the separation of church and state.” This phrase is not included in any of our founding documents, so it’s completely untrue to say the U.S. is founded on the separation of church and state.
Also on page 189, Ms. Biskupic writes, "[American Lawyer magazine columnist Stuart Taylor] accused Scalia of having a 'persecution complex.' [Mr. Taylor] referred to Scalia's 'flirtation with Christian victimology' and wrote that the justice was parroting unthinkingly 'the kind of nonsense that is often heard from the likes of [television evangelist] Pat Robertson and [the conservative commentator] Patrick Buchanan.'" It’s hard to find a more condescending phrase than “parroting unthinkingly”. It’s just a guess on my part, but I believe that Ms. Biskupic was very happy to include the quote from Mr. Taylor because it summarizes her thoughts on Christian “nonsense”.
As noted in the examples above and on page after page in American Original, Ms. Biskupic continually quotes people who disagree with Mr. Scalia's "originalist" Constitutional view and his judicial decisions. Knowing that the author has an anti-Scalia bias before reading the book will make reading American Original a little easier to stomach, but the book could have been so much better if it had been written by an author without such an obvious agenda.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
If nothing else, Scalia was an American Original
By Bimmer RoadRunner
If nothing else, Scalia was an American Original
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