Associate Justice Antonin Scalia

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Antonin Gregory Scalia (born March 11, 1936) is an American jurist and the second most senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Widely regarded as the intellectual anchor of the Court's conservative wing, he is a vigorous proponent of textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation, and a passionate critic of the idea of a Living Constitution. However, unlike his more ardent states' rights conservative colleagues, such as the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, Justice Scalia does have a favorable view of national power and a strong executive. In this sense, he can be called a Hamiltonian.

Antonin Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey. His mother, Catherine, was born in the United States; his father, S. Eugene, a professor of romance languages, emigrated from Sicily at age 15. When Scalia was five years old, his family moved to the Elmhurst section of Queens, New York City, during which time his father worked at Brooklyn College in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

A member of the Roman Catholic Church, Scalia attended Xavier High School, a Catholic and Jesuit school in Manhattan. He graduated first in his class and summa cum laude with an A.B. from Georgetown University in 1957. While at Georgetown, he also studied at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and went on to study law at Harvard Law School (where he was a Notes Editor for the Harvard Law Review). He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law in 1960, becoming a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University the following year. The fellowship allowed him to travel throughout Europe during 1960–1961.

On September 10, 1960, Scalia married Maureen McCarthy, an English major at Radcliffe College. Together they have nine children – Ann Forrest (born September 2, 1961), Eugene (labor attorney, former Solicitor of the Department of Labor), John Francis, Catherine Elisabeth, Mary Clare, Paul David (now a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Arlington at St. Rita's Catholic Church), Matthew (a West Point graduate and U.S. Army Major currently serving as an ROTC instructor at the University of Delaware), Christopher James (currently at the University of Wisconsin), and Margaret Jane (studying at the University of Virginia).