Antonin Gregory Scalia [ n 1 ] March 11, β February 13, [ n 2 ] was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from until his death in He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U. Supreme Court 's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, [ 7 ] and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court.
Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey. Scalia went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and spent six years at Jones Day before becoming a law professor at the University of Virginia.
In the early s, he served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, eventually becoming an assistant attorney general under President Gerald Ford. 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.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Four years later, Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court, where Scalia became its first Italian-American justice following a unanimous confirmation by the U. Senate 98β0. Scalia espoused a conservative jurisprudence and ideology, advocating textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation.
He peppered his colleagues with "Ninograms" memos named for his nickname, " Nino " intending to persuade them to his point of view. He was a strong defender of the powers of the executive branch and believed that the U. Constitution permitted the death penalty and did not guarantee the right to either abortion or same-sex marriage. Furthermore, Scalia viewed affirmative action and other policies that afforded special protected status to minority groups as unconstitutional.
