Scalia memorialized in Supreme Court ceremony

By Robert Barnes

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court completed its long goodbye to the late justice Antonin Scalia on Friday with what have become familiar eulogies to his writing skills and his impact on the law.

The memorial observance was overseen by Scalia’s former clerks and involved a resolution passed by lawyers who practice before the court presented to the eight remaining justices by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The conservative Scalia was often at odds with the administration she serves, but Lynch said she was representing all lawyers. There was no hint of past discord.

“The passing of Justice Scalia has left an enormous void in this courtroom and in the life of the law throughout the United States,” Lynch told the court. “With his razor-sharp brilliance and unmatched eloquence, Justice Scalia transformed the way that jurists and lawyers approach the law. He strode like a colossus through some of the most important opinions, concurrences and dissents of our time.”

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. accepted the resolution, recalling that when President Ronald Reagan nominated the little-known Scalia in 1986, journalists had to ask how to pronounce his first and last names.

Now his legal theories are “a central feature of every law school’s constitutional curriculum.”

There have been many tributes to Scalia since his sudden death in February; the law school at George Mason University has already changed its name to honor him.

But as the ornamental tortoises that adorn the Supreme Court building signify, the court moves at its own deliberate speed.

Also waiting: Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s choice to replace Scalia and who has gone months without even a Senate hearing. Garland was in the audience along with a clutch of other judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit often mentioned as potential justices.

There was no mention of the nomination, but Garland sat almost directly in front of the empty space on the bench, which is on the end next to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Most of the remembrances of Scalia at the meeting of the Supreme Court bar were from some of the more than 100 clerks — the “clerkeratti,” they said Scalia dubbed them — who worked for the justice.

They identified his twin contributions to the law as his promotion of originalism — interpreting the words of the Constitution as they were understood at the time — and adhering strictly to the text of statutes, instead of trying to conform the law to the intention of legislators.

Part of the legacy are those who worked for him. Bradford Clark, a George Washington University law professor, said 28 of Scalia’s former aides now teach law.

And former solicitor general Paul Clement noted the number of clerks who, like him, represent clients before the Supreme Court. Last term, Clement said, there were 11 of them, and a former Scalia clerk was involved in nearly a third of the court’s cases, he said.