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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who had ties to New York—he graduated first in his class from Jesuit-run Xavier High School in Manhattan and was raised in Queens—died of apparent natural causes Feb. 13 while in Texas on a hunting trip. He was 79.
According to news reports at press time, the Funeral Mass was scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 20 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
Scalia once said in an interview that while he took his Catholic faith seriously, he never allowed it to influence his work on the high court.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as a Catholic judge,” Scalia told The Catholic Review, Baltimore’s archdiocesan newspaper, in 2010. “There are good judges and bad judges. The only article in faith that plays any part in my judging is the commandment ‘Thou Shalt Not Lie.’”
Scalia said it wasn’t his job to make policy or law, but to “say only what the law provides.” He was widely regarded as an “originalist,” who said the best method for judging cases was examining what the Founding Fathers meant when writing the Constitution.
“My burden is not to show that originalism is perfect, but that it beats the other alternatives,” he said in a 2010 lecture.
Nominated to the high court in June 1986 by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the Senate that September, Scalia was the longest-serving member of the current Supreme Court.
With his death, there are now five Catholics among the remaining eight justices.
“We are all deeply saddened by the sudden and unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia,” said Bishop Paul S. Loverde of Arlington, Va., the diocese Scalia and his wife of nearly 56 years, Maureen McCarthy Scalia, called home.
“His presence among us encouraged us to be faithful to our own responsibilities whether familial, religious or vocational. His wisdom brought clarity to issues. His witness to truth enabled us to seek to do the same,” the bishop said in a statement.
Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl noted that every year, Scalia attended the Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C. The Mass is celebrated to invoke God’s blessings on those who work in the administration of justice.
Besides his wife, Scalia is survived by the couple’s five sons and four daughters as well as 36 grandchildren. Their son, Father Paul Scalia, is a priest of the Arlington Diocese.
Born in Trenton, N.J., and raised in Elmhurst, Queens, Antonin “Nino” Gregory Scalia was an only child. His father, Salvatore, was an Italian immigrant from Sicily, who worked as a clerk and was a graduate student when his son was born. Salvatore eventually became a college professor. Antonin’s mother, born in Trenton to Italian immigrant parents, was an elementary school teacher.
In 1953, young Antonin graduated first in his class from Xavier High School. There he played the French horn in the school band, was active on the debating team and was a member of the Sodality of Our Lady, according to a CNY article published in 1986, the same year Scalia was confirmed to the high court.
When Scalia attended Xavier, the school was a military academy. A beadle called the class to attention when the teacher entered, and ROTC classes met once a week.
Scalia was a lieutenant colonel in the regiment, the second highest rank in Junior ROTC, according to the CNY article quoting the then-rector.
Scalia went on to be first in his class at Jesuit-run Georgetown University, where he graduated in 1957. A 1960 alumnus of Harvard Law School, he served as editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Scalia moved to Cleveland, practicing law there with the firm of Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis until 1967. He then joined the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. He took a leave in 1971 when President Richard Nixon appointed him general counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy.
He left the university in 1974, when he was appointed assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. In 1977, Scalia returned to teaching. He was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School. He also was a visiting professor at the law schools of Georgetown and Stanford University.
In 1982, Reagan nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where he served until being named to the Supreme Court.
In 2000, Scalia was honored by St. John’s University School of Law at its 75th anniversary dinner in Manhattan. He received the school’s St. Thomas More Award for Outstanding Moral Leadership.
In January 2007, Scalia delivered an address at Iona College in New Rochelle titled “On Interpreting the Constitution.” Scalia was serving as the Jack Rudin and John G. Driscoll Distinguished Visiting Professor at Iona College during that spring semester.
Speaking at the Guild of Catholic Lawyers’ annual brunch in Manhattan in November 1991, Scalia said that “what is lawful is not always right.”
According to a CNY article about the event, he told the gathering of Catholic lawyers and judges that “moral confusion” can arise when rights are “exalted” for their own sake.
Scalia gave as an example a situation in which someone refuses to answer questions about possible criminal activity, pleading Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
“But when the consequences of exercising that right may cause an innocent person to be convicted, exercising that right is wrong,” Scalia said.
The brunch at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel followed the annual Red Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for lawyers, judges and others in the legal profession and law enforcement.
In 1994, Catholic University honored Scalia with the James Cardinal Gibbons Medal, given for service to the nation, the Catholic Church or the university. In 1999, the university gave Scalia an honorary degree.
In 2010, the St. Thomas More Society of Maryland honored Scalia with its “Man for All Seasons Award,” given to members of the legal profession who embody the ideals of St. Thomas More.
Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese of the Military Services said Feb. 15 that Scalia “was a brilliant jurist who contributed much to the country and I mourn his passing. We are all poorer, because he no longer walks among us, but richer, because of the gifts he shared with us.”—CNS
Contributing to this story were CNY staff, and George P. Matysek Jr. and Carol Zimmermann.
