<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Perhaps no single judge in recent years has embodied the intricacies and difficulties of the cultural life of the law as much as American Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. While common law judges have traditionally acquired status—and cultural relevance—from the significance, eloquence and forcefulness of their judicial opinions, Justice Scalia took an altogether different route. Both on and off the bench, he pushed the limits of legal and political legitimacy. He did this through a strict adherence to what we call a “judicial mandate,” flamboyant but engaging writing, biting humor and widespread marketing of his originalist and textualist interpretative theories. This article chronicles these features of Scalia’s jurisprudence and public life more generally, ultimately characterising the late justice as a “sacred symbol” in American legal and political circles, and beyond.</p></abstract>

Perhaps no single judge in recent years has embodied the intricacies and difficulties of the cultural life of the law as much as American Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. While common law judges have traditionally acquired status—and cultural relevance—from the significance, eloquence and forcefulness of their judicial opinions, Justice Scalia took an altogether different route. Both on and off the bench, he pushed the limits of legal and political legitimacy. He did this through a strict adherence to what we call a “judicial mandate,” flamboyant but engaging writing, biting humor and widespread marketing of his originalist and textualist interpretative theories. This article chronicles these features of Scalia’s jurisprudence and public life more generally, ultimately characterising the late justice as a “sacred symbol” in American legal and political circles, and beyond.

Justices as “Sacred Symbols”: Antonin Scalia and the Cultural Life of the Law

Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Polical Science

British Journal of American Legal Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Perhaps no single judge in recent years has embodied the intricacies and difficulties of the cultural life of the law as much as American Supreme Court Justice...

Justices as “Sacred Symbols”: Antonin Scalia and the Cultural Life of the Law

Published Online: May 19, 2017

Page range: 7 - 23

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/bjals-2017-0002

© 2017 Brian Christopher Jones, Austin Sarat

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.