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u n i v e r s a l c h u r c h since 1989, including the Tulsa Tribune, does a thorough job in presenting a multifaceted profile of Scalia in “American Original.” Stories about family, childhood and the environment in which he was raised provide a basis for understanding the develop-ment of Scalia as a Catholic, as a legal scholar, as an attorney in the Ford and Reagan administrations and as a judicial appointee. He terms himself a constitutional “originalist” --one whose views of the Constitution replicate the minds and intentions of the document’s framers. “It means what it meant when it was written,” Scalia said of originalism in a 1997 lecture. “I am now something of a dodo bird among jurists and legal schol-ars. You can fire a cannon in the faculty lounge of any major law school in the country and not strike an originalist.” To that end, he sees specific, well-defined roles for each of the three branches of government. Members of those branches, depending on their political leanings and legal philosophies, may or may not concur. “Part of my charm is telling people what they don’t like to hear,” he once stated. His speeches and judicial opinions are rife with things people might not want to hear, but that doesn’t dissuade him from saying and writing them. In interviews and by drawing upon the journalistic and “American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia” by Joan Biskupic. Sarah Crichton Books/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, 2010). 449 pages, $27. Biography succeeds in presenting full portrait of one Catholic justice – Reviewed by Brian T. Olszewski, Catholic News Service Even though there are six Catholics on the U.S. Su-preme Court – Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor – it is likely that if people were asked to name one, their guess would be Scalia, the longest-serving and most vocal of the six. In a profession where one’s religious beliefs are often kept out of the public eye, lest one be accused of allowing them to influence his or her jurisprudence, Scalia, a member of the court since 1986, has made no attempt to hide his Catholicism. A devotee of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass who terms the Second Vatican Council as “not on my hit parade,” Scalia could accurately be described as “old-school Catholic.” That his nine children attended public schools instead of Catholic schools appears to be out of character for the Scalia family – one of his sons is a monsignor – yet a reason is never given for that educational choice. Despite that omission, Joan Biskupic, a lawyer and journal-ist who has covered the Supreme Court for a variety of media Eastern Oklahoma Catholic 30 July/August 2010 | www.dioceseoftulsa.org scholarly work of others, Biskupic compiles a thorough look at Scalia. A reader who is only vaguely familiar with his views on abortion (“My difficulty with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral one. I do not believe – and no one believed for 200 years – that the Constitution contains a right to abortion”), affir-mative action (“To set one race against another by giving racial preference does not solve the problem. It just further engrains the problem.”) and gay rights (“My court struck (Colorado’s anti-gay law) down as unconstitutional under ... the Homosexu-ality Clause of the Bill of Rights.”) will certainly come away with a better understanding of Scalia’s thinking and rulings. His view on capital punishment also is noted in his own words: “The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment – in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for hor-rible crimes – outweighs the risk of error.” What adds dimension to this work, and helps in getting to know Scalia, are the interactions he has with other justices, their reactions to his views – and how he states them. In providing these dialogues, Biskupic not only gives the reader a fuller view of Scalia, but of the judicial process at this level. It’s a personal civics lesson. The value of biography is to get to know the subject – through the author’s descriptions, the words of others and the subject’s words themselves. All three are present in this volume. “American Original” is simply good biography. It helps that Biskupic’s subject is brilliant and fascinating, but by them-selves that would not be enough. She culls that brilliance and fascination from his life and work and compiles it in a form that will allow the reader to become more knowledgeable about a central figure in the Supreme Court; one whose work will eventually place him as a significant person in U.S. Catho-lic and U.S. jurisprudence history. Brian T. Olszewski is general manager of theCatholic Herald, the publication of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
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