Customer Reviews

American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

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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.

American Original is the latest judicial biography by the insightful and talented Joan Biskupic. Having covered the Supreme Court for many years for The Washington Post and USA Today, Ms. Biskupic has honed her remarkable talent for understanding the people behind the robes. With a fluid and engaging style of writing, the author shows how the justices' personal lives impact their judicial decision making. After successfully publishing a biography of Justice Sandra Day O'Conner several years ago, Ms. Biskupic trains her sights on one of our most intriguing and provocative justices, Antonin Scalia. Reading American Original provides an in depth understanding of the life events that shaped Justice Scalia's vision of what the Constitution means and how it should be applied. Ms Biskupic's research is informed by numerous interviews with not only Justice Scalia and his family but virtually all of the sitting justices, a remarkable feat and a testament to the writer's investigative skills. Lest anyone be concerned that this biography is "soft" on Justice Scalia, Ms Biskupic offers a balanced and often critical analysis of the Justice's decisions. What stands out in American Original is the fullness of Justice Scalia's pesonality. You may not agree with his philosophy but he is a larger than life individual whose intellectual prowess and engaging manner make him a compelling character.
To better understand the long journey towards a more conservative Supreme Court, one must read American Original. While it may be known today as the "Roberts Court", it had its genesis from the commencement of Justice Scalia's tenure. American Original is a book that everyone, not just lawyers, should read to understand the impact of the Supreme Court in our lives.

Having read this biography several times, I must largely concur with Mr. Kelleher's review. This is a good IDEA for a biography, but the end product is badly flawed. Ms. Biskupic, like many of Scalia's critics, and like many aminstream journalists who cover conservative thought, does not really engage with Scalia's ideas, or with his intellectual development. I was amazed that she does not even discuss Scalia's book A Matter of Interpretation. She talks about the influence of Catholicism on Scalia, yet does not discuss in detail what he studied at Georgetown or who he studied with. One reads constanly that Scalia graduated with honors in History. Which branch of History? Did he focus on American History or on European? Was he influenced by Georgetown's renowned and controversial Professor Carrroll Quigley? Scalia is usually seen as an "intellectual" conservative. What book and writers influenced him. We know that Clarence Thomas read Harry Jaffa and that William Rehnquist was deeply influenced by Hayek and Oakeshott. Who influenced Scalia?
In short, this book leavesa lot of questions unaanswered. It is a brilliant piece of inside reporting on court politics and personalities, but a superficial view of its subject.

I agree with most everything written here by Jeff Kelleher. There isn't much new ground broken in this book. I, too, could read the sources; it seems that's all she's done. Where's the insight? Then there's the author's disdain for Scalia's judicial philosophy. What's next? Ann Coulter gets to write a biography of Obama? Skip this one.

The dust jacket says that this is a "full-scale biography" of Justice Antonin ("Nino") Scalia. It is not a biography in the usual sense of the word. It is more like one of the "Highlights" videos that are regularly produced by NFL football teams. To be sure, there are some elements of biography. For example, we learn that Scalia's father was Italian, that he earned a Ph.D. and that he taught English in Brooklyn College. Also, we learn that the Scalias are Catholic, and that Nino was educated at a Jesuit-run high school and college. These biographical aspects of the book are important because the author frequently concludes that Justice Scalia's legal opinions can be traced back to the rigid rules of a father who taught languages, or to the legalistic beliefs held by Catholics - Jesuits in particular.

Like a highlights video, the book is organized around interesting constitutional issues and cases rather than following a traditional chronological timeline. Frequently using excerpts from the written opinions of Justice Scalia, there are short summaries of cases dealing with discrimination and affirmative action, abortion, religion, gay rights, the Bush/Gore presidential election, the Guantanamo detainees, and other important matters that came before the Supreme Court in the last twenty-five years. By and large, the summaries are substantively excellent. They are very well written and highly entertaining. Scalia's feistiness and dominating sense of humor are clearly presented. Opposing views of some of Scalia's colleagues on the bench and law school professors are presented, usually in conclusional form, sometimes through the author's introductory or concluding clauses. It is like reading a series of inter-related short stories. You do not want to put the book down.

The issue-oriented organization of the book does give rise to some difficulties, although those difficulties do not detract from the interesting narrative. For example, the book does not deal with the evolution of the Supreme Court, except insofar as it involves Scalia's contemporaries. The most senior of those contemporaries was Justice William Brennan. The Supreme Court was in existence 166 years before Justice Brennan was appointed, but no mention is made of the pattern of Court decisions during that span of time. Nor is there any mention that Brennan, who was only the second Catholic appointed to the Supreme Court during those 166 years, was exceedingly uncomfortable with the fact that his appointment was largely because he was a Catholic. (President Eisenhower was appealing to Catholic voters.) On the other hand, the book does mention the comment of Professor Stone, a former Brennan law clerk, that "All five justices in the majority [banning partial birth abortion] are Catholic." The implication is that the ruling was made on religious grounds. Finally, the reader gets no sense of the difficulty that must have been encountered by a person of average means who competes with the brightest lawyers in the country and succeeds as a Justice of the Supreme Court. That element is missing from this account.

Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic has accomplished a commendable feat of narrative art: to present in an engaging yet even-handed tone the legal, political, and spiritual perspectives that inform the jurisprudence of the Court's most controversial member. Scalia has been the subject of numerous books and articles which alternately laud or condemn his influence on the Court. Biskupic eschews "taking sides" in any partisan way and offers up the closest thing we have to a measured account of Scalia's life and his approach to the law.

Particularly commendable about the book is the fact that Scalia is a sitting Justice. It's usually very difficult for an author to remain tonally impartial when she is writing a "history of the present." Yet Biskupic manages to do just that, even when considering such recent events as Scalia's duck-hunting trip with then-Vice President Dick Cheney and the 2009 New Haven firefighters case.

One way Biskupic manages this task is to cite responses to Scalia's public statements and/or opinions from a range of perspectives, "liberal" to "conservative." Another way is to highlight both the consistencies and inconsistencies with Scalia's professed "originalism." But much of the credit should go to Biskupic's own narrative style, which is the hallmark not of "objective" journalistic reporting but of measured historical analysis. Reading her book almost feels like assessing the career of a highly influential jurist from the past. That Scalia is a sitting Justice seems incidental to Biskupic's larger project of understanding his life and perspectives in rigorous historical context.

I highly recommend this book not only to students of law and the U.S. Supreme Court but also to anyone interested in civics, legal reasoning, and the art of biographical writing.

A solid judicial biography, particularly of Supreme Court justices, can immeasurably increase our understanding of not only the individual justice, but the context within which he or she makes decisions. I have found that understanding the background and past experiences of a justice provides suggestive insights into their behavior. But when the subject is white-hot controversial, such as Justice Scalia, the biography assumes the extra burden of avoiding being sucked into the arguments relative to the subject and instead keeping on an even keel. As one would expect who had read her previous biography of Sandra Day O'Connor [also reviewed on Amazon], Joan Biskupic's biography of Scalia, I believe the first comprehensive one written so far, meets and surpasses every test for excellence.

The author traces not only Scalia's personal and professional lives, but also casts some interesting insights into how (and perhaps why) Scalia developed some of his ideas--particularly originalism, his dedication to protecting and expanding presidential power, a strong adversion to "legislative history," his distaste for the "imperial judiciary," and (as the son of Sicilian immigrants) his opposition to affirmative action. The first four chapters chronologically follow Scalia through his childhood, into the Nixon & Ford administrations, his critical role in getting the Federalist Society up and running, and most interestingly, how Scalia positioned himself to appeal to the Reagan administration to gain important appointments (although he apparently did not hit it off with William French Smith and missed out on being Solicitor General). By the fifth chapter, he is on the D.C. Circuit and beginning his judicial career. An interesting chapter tackles his Supreme Court nomination where, surprisingly by today's standards, he was confirmed 98-0 by a GOP-controlled Senate.

Beginning with chapter 7, the author gets to the real heart of the book for understanding Scalia and his role. His inability to build coalitions such as Brennan and O'Connor could do, because of his refusal to compromise, reduced his impact on the Court where often he spoke only for himself. His tendency to scold (particularly O'Connor) also diminished his influence. It was not until the later conservative Republican appointees joined the Court (Kennedy,Thomas, Roberts, Alito) that Scalia began to find himself regularly in the majority. Individual chapters discuss racial issues, his pressing for weakening the wall between church and state, his moral views on issues like abortion and gay rights, and of course Bush v. Gore, in one of the best short (and analytically calm) discussions I have read. The author also discusses his failure to succeed Rehnquist as chief justice, his tendency to speak openly about issues likely to reach the court, and his domination of oral arguments.

Biskupic certainly discusses the views of those who have criticized Scalia, but fundamentally the book is nicely balanced. Unlike many judicial biographies, the author does not bury the reader in endless case discussions--rather she develops themes which facilitate understanding. Also she introduces various of Scalia's views throughout the book so that the reader can ingest them better. The book reflects serious research, with 42 pages of notes, many interviews (including several of Scalia himself), and substantial reliance upon primary sources such as the Blackmun papers (much as she did with O'Connor). I have never been a fan of Scalia, but I now so much better understand him and where he is coming from so that any future study of the Justice by me will be much better informed. You can't ask for more than that from a judicial biography.

Joan Biskupic has done a great job of squeezing a very complex judge's thinking and behavior into a readable volume. Whereas Scalia has led a large enough life to support a much longer biography, this is less of a traditional biography and more of a 'What stance has Antonin Scalia take in jurisprudence, why is it different than what many of even his conservative colleagues subscribe to, and why is he so influential?'

Thus, his early life gets a relatively short shrift, and the vast majority of the book is about his life and rulings as a judge.

But that's okay for me, because Antonin Scalia has developed and pursued a school of thought called 'constitutional originalism' which has had a very big impact on the political leanings of two decades of law students. Moreover, he has written many, many majority opinions where he uses constitutional originalism as his argument (not terribly different from Justice Brennan's reliance on 'human dignity' at first blush, although there is far more explicated and detailed thinking behind originalism.)

It's a relatively new way (Scalia would say it was the first since it is what the founders intended) to look at the law in terms of recent jurisprudence, and it has caught on famously with most conservatives. You can find professors and students who profess this form of jurisprudence now at almost any major law school, and that is quite a change from a generation ago. If you're interested in the law, then you really have to understand originalism, and this is a great book to start with, or with which to enlarge your knowledge.

So if you're a moderate or a liberal who may find originalism anachronistic at best and anathema at worst, why would you read this book?:

1) Scalia is going to be around for another decade, and his influence at the court is very strong. Understand him and you understand a lot about how the court approaches any case.

To use a chess analogy, he is like a Queen in the center of the board during play. He projects a lot of power in a lot of directions. You can't understand the board without taking into account his position and power.

2) He's a genuinely interesting, nearly larger than life character who is a terrific communicator in all venues.

You have to think back to William F. Buckley or Gore Vidal to think of someone more specific and expressive with their vocabulary. Parsing his quotes, and thinking about why he chose to express himself the way he did reveals a real wordsmith of the first order;

3) He has a great story. This is the immigrant success story (actually son of an immigrant success story who went on to do even better than his Dad) that just has 'feel good' all over it;

4) Biskupic is a skillful writer about legal matters. She can summarize cases succinctly, and almost always seems to tell us enough facts to ground us in what is being discussed without overburdening us. As a consequence, she covers a lot of important cases (good judgment on what she chose to cover) in a book of easily readable length.



There's a lot to criticize both originalism and Scalia for, even though I have some sympathy for his intent. I find him behaving inconsistently in the principles of originalism with regards to states rights, no small matter. For instance, he is all about the Federal courts getting out of the way of the state courts on gun regulation, but there is no way he is going to let the states set a different policy than the Federal government's with regards to marijuana, medicinal or otherwise. That's just darn hard to parse and make sense of.

I also found his blocking of the recount in several Florida counties of ballots in Bush V. Gore to be a similar high handed intrusion in states rights and inconsistent with the Federal government not expanding its powers beyond the original Constitution.

And his reading on the Second Amendment ruling in a D.C. case seems just like the sort of thing William Brennan used to do (see 'Justice Brennan; Liberal Champion', which I reviewed last week) all the time (i.e., reading specific intent into the minds of the drafters of the Constitution's, without any written support), and which Scalia criticized consistently.

Scalia is not John Marshall, but he's a lot more important than most who have sat there or are sitting there today. He's a great subject, and I thought Biskupic did a consistently admirable job of picking the best stories and cases to explain the man and his jurisprudence. And then making it compelling reading.

This would be a fine holiday gift for anyone interested in the law.

Outstanding biography about the unique and impressive career of his honor, Antonin Scalia. Easy to read and as informative as it was entertaining. Highly recommended for even the casual legal buff and makes a great gift for any lawyer, law student, or pre-law major.

Before I begin, please note that I (in general) rarely agree with Scalia's position. That being said.....

Regardless of what you personally think of Scalia's views, anyone who has actually READ any of his opinions must acknowledge he is a master of his field; he is an excellent, often persuasive writer, and he is the most engaging of any of the justices to read - even though I often disagree with him, I always was happy to see his name on a decision when I picked up a law school textbook, as I knew it would be an "easy", sometimes even entertaining, read. While his style can be off-putting and combative, no one who has spent extensive time reading Supreme Court cases can deny the power of his writing or that the is a skilled writer, nor the sharpness of his mind and his wit. He is a critical ally or deadly enemy, depending on your cause and the side you take on it. For that reason alone, he's worth understanding better - when you combine that with the lightening rod he has become in the conservative versus liberal (or activist versus restraint) debate, he is an important figure in the legal landscape of our time. For that reason, if you have an interest in the law he is worth understanding regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum.

Biskupic does a great job of researching and fleshing out what has made Scalia into the undeniably conservative, curmudgeonly man he is today. As far as biographies go, I felt this was well researched and flowed well - not too detailed, not too sparse. Side note: Her O'Connor book is great too, I will not post a full review as I only scanned it when working on a research project, but I would like to read it's entirety at some point and I recommend it. She has a lot of interesting background, and she does (I believe) a good job of parsing out his opinions and why he takes the positions that he does. Her story was engaging throughout, and I had an entirely different understanding of Scalia than I did before I picked it up. I hope to be seeing more portraits of justices (or other political figures) from her in the future.