I’ve always hated bullies, and that’s exactly what Scalia was: an angry general in the culture wars who coarsened the judicial system with his over-the-top rhetoric. He was the 1984 Georgetown Hoyas of Supreme Court justices–merely winning wasn’t enough; he had to crush your spirit and rip your heart out in the process.
That would have been unremarkable if he had been a conservative newspaper columnist or a Fox News commentator, but as a jurist, we had a right to expect better. And he was a political hack, too; don’t be misled by descriptions of a few of his decisions that make him look like a modern day version of Felix Frankfurter. He believed in judicial restraint, except when it wouldn’t serve the interests of cultural conservatives, in which case he didn’t.
It was only fitting that Donald Trump put on a show on national TV the same night he died. In judicial terms, Scalia’s style was a slightly less boorish and far more sophisticated version of Trump’s.
He had better approach his final judgment with vastly more humility and understanding than he ever showed on the bench. Meanwhile, back on Earth, he won’t be missed, except by his ideological fellow travelers.