Antonin Scalia, the influentialmember of the Supreme Court, died Saturday at the age of 79. An only child, Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on March 11, 1936.
His father, Salvatore Eugene Scalia, was an Italian immigrant from Sicily, who later became a professor of Romance languages at Brooklyn College. Eugene was a graduate student and clerk at the time of his son’s birth. Antonin’s mother, Catherine Panaro Scalia, was born in Trenton, to Italian immigrant parents, and worked as an elementary school teacher.
Scalia began his legal career at Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked from 1961 to 1967.[15] He was highly regarded at Jones Day and would most likely have been made a partner, but later stated he had long intended to teach. He became a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia in 1967, moving his family to Charlottesville, Virginia.
Scalia served on the Court for nearly thirty years, during which time he established a solidly conservative voting record and ideology, advocating textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation. He was a strong defender of the powers of the executive branch, believing presidential power should be paramount in many areas.
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