The most comprehensive study of Justice Scalia's politics and jurisprudence yet published, Justice Antonin Scalia and the Conservative Revival joins a vital discussion on contemporary American conservatism and the use of the law to restrain or undermine the New Deal state.

This book explains how the debate over originalism emerged from the interaction of constitutional theory, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and American political development. Refuting the contention that originalism is a recent concoction of political conservatives like Robert Bork, Johnathan O'Neill asserts that recent appeals to the origin of the Constitution in Supreme Court decisions and commentary, especially by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, continue an established pattern in American history. Originalism in American Law and Politics is distinguished by its historical approach to the topic. Drawing on constitutional commentary and treatises, Supreme Court and lower federal court opinions, congressional hearings, and scholarly monographs, O'Neill's work will be valuable to historians, academic lawyers, and political scientists.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist's "astonishing" and "enthralling" New York Times bestseller and Notable Book about how the Founders' belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition (Booklist) -- "easily one of the best books on American Conservatism ever written" (Jonah Goldberg). For more than four decades, George F. Will has attempted to discern the principles of the Western political tradition and apply them to America's civic life. Today, the stakes could hardly be higher. Vital questions about the nature of man, of rights, of equality, of majority rule are bubbling just beneath the surface of daily events in America. The Founders' vision, articulated first in the Declaration of Independence and carried out in the Constitution, gave the new republic a framework for government unique in world history. Their beliefs in natural rights, limited government, religious freedom, and in human virtue and dignity ushered in two centuries of American prosperity. Now, as Will shows, conservatism is under threat -- both from progressives and elements inside the Republican Party. America has become an administrative state, while destructive trends have overtaken family life and higher education. Semi-autonomous executive agencies wield essentially unaccountable power. Congress has failed in its duty to exercise its legislative powers. And the executive branch has slipped the Constitution's leash. In the intellectual battle between the vision of Founding Fathers like James Madison, who advanced the notion of natural rights that pre-exist government, and the progressivism advanced by Woodrow Wilson, the Founders have been losing. It's time to reverse America's political fortunes. Expansive, intellectually thrilling, and written with the erudite wit that has made Will beloved by millions of readers, The Conservative Sensibility is an extraordinary new book from one of America's most celebrated political writers.

The Political Thought of Antonin Scalia: A Hamiltonian on the Supreme Court traces Justice Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence back to the political and constitutional thought of Alexander Hamilton. Not only is there substantial agreement between these two men in the areas of constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, executive and judicial power, but the two men also have similar temperaments: bold, decisive, and principled. By examining the congruence in thought between Hamilton and Scalia, it is hoped that a better and deeper understanding of Justice Scalia's jurisprudence will be achieved. While an abundance of scholarship has been written on Justice Scalia, no one has systematically examined his political philosophy. This book also draws out the important differences between Justice Scalia's jurisprudence and that of the other conservative members of the Court_the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas.

Many hoped or feared that Antonin Scalia’s appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986 would guarantee a conservative counter-revolution that would reverse the liberal jurisprudence of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren and which was continued to some extent under the Burger Court though the influence of Justice William Brennan. In addition, President Reagan described Scalia’s nomination as part of a project to remake the role of the Court, promote an interpretive approach of originalism, and shift authority and discretion to the States. Yet by the time of his death in 2016 it was unclear to what extent Scalia had effected the legal, institutional, or political revolutions that had been anticipated. While the Court did move to the right doctrinally, and reversed or modified many Vinson-Warren-Burger precedents, Scalia’s influence on constitutional jurisprudence turned out to be far less than it could have been, and his ability to persuade other Justices to adopt his legal views—both substantively and methodologically—was less than many mainstream media accounts recognize. Scalia’s institutional and political legacies are similarly complex: he was neither as transformative a figure as some of his allies might have hoped nor so unimportant as some of his detractors might have wished. The fact that his death and the controversy surrounding his replacement is so intense speaks to the fragile legacy that Scalia really has had on the Supreme Court after 30 years. This book will assess Scalia’s legacy in an edited volume that assembles leading legal and political science scholars who will evaluate his impact across a range of jurisprudential, institutional, and political issues.

Antonin Scalia and American Constitutionalism is an in-depth study of Justice Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence, his work on the Supreme Court, and his significance in the history of American constitutionalism. After tracing Scalia's rise to Associate Justice and his subsequent emergence as a hero of the Republican Party and the political right, this book reviews and criticizes his general jurisprudential theory, arguing that he failed to produce either the objective method he claimed or the correct constitutional results he promised. Focusing on his judicial performance over his thirty years on the Court, it examines his decisions and opinions on virtually all of the constitutional issues he addressed from the fundamentals of structure (federalism, separation of powers, and the Article III judicial power) to specific interpretations of most major constitutional provisions involving governmental powers and the rights of individuals under the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. This book argues that Scalia applied his jurisprudential theories in inconsistent and contradictory ways and often ignored, distorted, or abandoned the interpretive methods he proclaimed to reach the results he sought, results that were aligned with and supported by the post-Reagan Republican coalition. Scalia was far more consistent in enforcing such ideologically compatible results than he was in following his proclaimed jurisprudential theories. Finally, assessing Scalia's historical significance, Antonin Scalia and American Constitutionalism argues that his jurisprudence and career are particularly illuminating because they exemplify--contrary to his persistent claims--three paramount characteristics of American constitutionalism: the inherent inadequacy of originalism and other formal interpretive methodologies to produce consistent and correct answers to controverted constitutional questions; the close relationship that exists, particularly so in Scalia's case, between constitutional theories and interpretations on one hand and substantive political goals and values on the other; and the unavoidably living nature of American constitutionalism itself. All in all, Scalia stands as a towering figure of irony because his judicial career deconstructed the central claims of his own jurisprudence.

Presents an alphabetical listing of Supreme Court justices with a short biography on each person.