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An American Original: The Life And Constitution Of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (2000)

by Joan Biskupic(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 1

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English

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review 1: Not much life story.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 ... morehim? 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.
review 2: The library beckons. I must return the book. Actually I renewed it, but I am not really making progress, reading a only few pages in bed every night before the book hits my nose. So, I am stopping halfway through. My nose needs to heal. My son, the lawyer, highly recommended the book. It is good. If I was a laywer I might have finished it. The book describes the career of Antonin Scalia and how he rose through the ranks to become a supreme court justice. The book also describes how the supreme court works, the different perspectives of the different justices and the processes leading up to the different decisions. -- That is the point where I left. I don't know the decisions by name, or their significance, like a lawyer would. Without that perspective, the middle of the book was fairly random to me. With those caveats, I recommend the book. For me, the most interesting aspect was to see how unique each of the justices could be. They craft their own ways in coming to decisions and influencing their colleagues. It must be tough to be a lawyer since the justices are so unique. They can come to the same decision for widely different reasons. Or different decisions. --- That was the scary part. The role of ideology is strong and the court seems as polarized as our congress. Who we elect and whom is appointed makes a huge difference. Read it. Quit when you want. If you are a lawyer you will probably finish it. -- I am reminded of one of my favorite biographies..... Black Appolo...biography of Ernest Everett Just. He was a black scientist working in the early 1900s. The book is about the difficulties he encountered in doing research, obtaining positions, obtaining funding at a time when segregation was ascendent. The books describes the extent of support he garnered from those who bucked the system...and their limits. It is also about the nature of research at the time that genetics emerged as a discipline. I loved it but but I suspect my son, the lawyer, might get bogged down by oblique references to TH Morgan, Muller, Haldane,etc. less

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