Antonin Scalia, Full-Time Originalist

The Washington Post has published an op-ed by Washington lawyer David Dorsen under the headline “Antonin Scalia, Part-Time Liberal.” Dorsen contends that Justice Scalia “was personally a committed conservative and originalist” and that “he relied on that pair of approaches to render conservative opinions” on various topics. Dorsen goes on to recount a litany of what he terms “important liberal opinions” penned by Justice Scalia. 

Like Justice Scalia’s hundred-odd other former law clerks, I’m quite familiar with the justice’s oeuvre; by the time I worked for him, relatively late in his tenure on the bench, the justice had already staked out a position on most of the constitutional questions we encountered. So I was naturally curious to see whether Dorsen was aware of some hitherto underappreciated part of the Scalia canon that I (and many others) had somehow missed.

Read the full article at The National Review.