Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Christopher Scalia Scalia

This not about Court Opinions, its about speeches. His Court Opinions are memorable and im often said they went to his opinions first for that reason, they were so crispy written and evocative and powerful and his speeches have the same qualities as his opinions do. He could let more of his personality shine through for one thing. He was a great performer, a little bit of a ham. He played macbeth in a High School Production and i think the president of georgetown theater club so that shined through in the speeches in the way it doesnt in the opinions. And Court Opinions are necessarily they have to follow certain conventions that are asked to turn off the average person who is not a court person or a law student. So we wanted a collection that would be of interest to the layman, really. So itd be interesting to the average americans and not just the legal nerd. Host Something Like well adjusted normal people that dont read court opinion. Normal people arent going to read an opinion. Theyll read a writeup, but probably not the whole thing. One of the advantages about the speeches, especially the law, my dad could explain his approach to interpreting the constitution and the law without having to focus on a specific case, but bring in multiple cases and we were, the coeditor, ed whalen and i, were sure to pick ones that really would be understandable to anybody, not just a law student and of course, the range of subject matter. Obviously there are plenty of speeches about the law in here and a section devoted, really to his approaches to the law and his jurisprudence, but a lot of the speeches have nothing to do with the law and i think the readers will be interested in the surprising subjects he touches on in the speeches. Host certainly, i knew about his view of the law and the law speeches, but this has wonderful speeches at High School Graduations or talking about his catholic faith to catholic audiences. And its one of the real appeals of the book. Guest there were a couple that really surprised me, he spoke a couple of times at the National Wild Turkey Federation convection convention, but we included a speech my father explained why he became interested in hunting and why he loves it. Im not a hunter myself, but i enjoyed the speech because it showed a side of my father i knew a little about, but learned more about through that speech. Host you mentioned you did this with ed whalen, a law clerk from Justice Scalia in the early 90s. Ed is a terrific writer and greatly admired Justice Scalia. How did you do it . Was there a file cabinet full of typed up speeches or did you do any transcribing of audio recordings of speeches . We didnt do any audio transcription. All of these speeches, i should say theres one exception, but all of these speeches are ones that he had sharpened and revised pretty carefully himself. Only a couple had ever been published before and i think thats one of the great things in this collection, but the way we set about this is basically we got a couple of binders of his speeches from his secretary, angela, and he had two binders of about 50 speeches each, i think, spanning, the early 80s through the present. And in addition to those two binders, which were very easy to navigate. We also had a big box of loose speeches, a couple of which were just different versions of or cuts redundant versions of what we had in the binders, most were fresh ones we hadnt encountered. We had to sort through the loose speeches and then there was another box of floppy discs which some of your viewers may not even remember. An archaic form of storing information. So i had to sort through those speeches and again, a couple of those were ones we already had, but there were a lot of new speeches, there, too, it did involve a lot of sorting and sifting. But we were surprised by how many great speeches he had. We both knew he spoke a lot, but and we knew he spoke not just about the law, but at commencement addresses, he spoke at my high school graduation, so i was aware of that, but, again, the Turkey Hunting speech i had no idea about. Just the range of his speeches was very surprising and the consistent quality of them was surprising. So, as editors, i think the hardest thing ed and i had to do was decide what not to include. Theres really no filler in here. Theres a lot of good material that we couldnt include. Again, going back to thinking of the general reader, that was really the cutoff. If we thought that something would be a little too in the weeds for a general audience, we would exclude it. Host were there multiple versions of the same speech . Because i recall hearing Justice Scalia talk different places, different years and my impression was, that he had sort of a stump speech and he sort of knew what he wanted to say. As you say, he was a wonderful performer and a good speech part of it is the substance, but part of it is the points he would emphasize. But is it correct, your sense, that he had sort of a speech about originalism and the law and he could go to a lot of places and take that and sort of deliver it and add material and sort of just talk . He delivered, i think i think i know the stump speech youre referring to. Its a speech he delivered about originalism and why its superior to whats called a living constitution approach. Host right. To jurisprudence and i heard him deliver that speech, too, in madison, wisconsin in 2001. And its one he delivered very often. It was his stump speech and i was looking forward to finding a written version of that, i love that speech, i thought it was great. It included a wonderful passage where he just compared the living constitution approach to a Television Commercial from the 1980s where a prego commercial where somebody is making pasta and heating up storebought pasta sauce and the husband says to his wife, youre using this storebought sauce . Youre not doing it homemade . What about the oregano . And the wife says, its in there. What about the pepper . Its in there. The garlic . Its in there and my dad would say weve got that kind of a constitution now. You want a right to an abortion, its in there. You want a right to die, its in there. Anything thats good and true and beautiful, its in there, no matter what the text says, and i thought that was being a pop culture junky myself and having watched that commercial with my father, i thought i always loved that passage. I was looking forward to finding it, but he never actually apparently wrote that speech down. So, we have a version of it, a very a very different version of it in the collection. One he delivered in australia, i think in the early 90s. But that particular version, which he delivered very often, he never wrote down and instead, he works from a very clipped series of of notes that he called the outline. And the outline of prompts that he would rip off of and if you looked at this speech and the outline, what could this mean . There are 50 words on it, some are misspelled and then he would photocopy the outline and write notes on it for any different occasion. So, the people he should thank at the speech or new ideas that popped into his head. Unfortunately, theres no reference to the prego Television Commercial on the outline. Were surprised thats how he did it. He knew what he wanted to say so clearly, it was easy for him to just rip riff off that basic outline. Host you were a student at university of wisconsin at that time . Yes. Host one thing i remember talking to Justice Scalia about it, he would go out to a lot of universities and then there would be he would surely have a lot of protesters, and maybe its gotten worse now than it was then. But even 20 years ago or whatever, i would always admire the fact that he would go to law schools and universities where he knew there was going to be some, you yeah, people who didnt like him. And he did it anyway. He was not shy about what he thought he was he was a brave guy and didnt mind being criticized. I think its unfortunate the way that politics have gone these days, people tend to go to places where theyll be welcomed and not liberals go one place and conservatives the other. You actually remember him going to wisconsin and getting some protests or some yeah, it was in 2001, shortly after the bush v gore decision so he wasnt terribly popular in madison, wisconsin. There were protesters outside. It wasnt a violent demonstration or anything, really just a handful of demonstrators outside holding pictures of hitler, mussolini and my dad. So, pretty, pretty subdued stuff, nothing too terrible. And like you, you wonder what would be the case now . Im assuming it would be more intense now. That was outside. Inside the lecture hall, the audience was respectful, there were there were pretty intense questions afterwards, there were certainly plenty of people there who disagreed with him and let him know that and there was some combative back and forth even. It wasnt all polite. But, you know, my father delivered speeches in what you might call hostile territory because he was he believed he could persuade people and he believed that people in general were persuadable and open to reason. Even people who disagreed with him. At the very least, he wanted them to hear his ideas unfiltered and he think thats why he delivered speeches as often as he did, and as many speeches as he did. He really believed that he could persuade people and i think that even if he didnt persuade people to agree with him, he was at least able to show that he wasnt the caricature that maybe a lot of people had going into into this speech or the event. Host thats always the reaction i heard from the speeches, either talking to people or reading about them, is that a fair number of students would be quoted say, what do you think . They said, well, i didnt agree with Justice Scalia, but he made a really good argument for this. They came away thinking, you know, theyd actually learned something that caused them to think twice about what they thought. Guest yeah. Host and that he really could sort of win over people to say, this is a really smart guy. Hes got a really good point. I didnt really understand the argument that he was making. He also had a sort of, like nobody else at the court, that the law is sort of he loved to argue and that theres sort of a combat of ideas. And i remember asking him once, hed written some opinions that were sort of critical of Justice Oconnor. People said it sounds like youre going hard on Justice Oconnor. Were friends and we disagree on some things. You go to the middle of the ring and tap gloves and come out swinging and Justice Oconnor probably didnt see the job that way, but his view was that you sort of argue about the law and that was the way to do it because thats the way to, you know, to grapple with whats the right answer. People disagree, you should talk it out. Guest and he often is quoted as saying, i dont attack people, i attack ideas and a lot of very good people have some very bad ideas and thats how he saw it. He didnt in his opinions he didnt do add homonym attacks and he didnt expect, going back to the boxing analogy, he expected people to take their own punches at him, too. Host right. Guest Justice Ginsburg writes the forward to this collection and one of the things that she mentions is that they people may know that they were good friends. They also were good colleagues because they helped each other writing their opinions by pushing back at each other in the drafts, kind of explaining how they could improve an element of their argument by taking into account this point or changing this phrasing here and there. Even though they disagreed, they were trying to help each other out by pushing back. My father my father thought that, again, going back to the concept of persuasion, its possible to persuade people and its possible to help one another kind of arrive at the truth of the matter by but not by just saying what you want without any feedback. There had to be some give and take there, and some conversation, basically. Host their friendship was sort of the wonderful things in washington you dont see much anymore, that they were sort of on the opposite side of ideological sides about a lot of big issues, but it never you know, they were friends in the 1980s, they were friends up to the end. They got together regularly. Justice scalia always spoke well of Justice Ginsburg. Guest yeah. Host he might not join one of her opinions, but he never derided her. Ng he respected her, she respected him, they were friends and its unfortunate that you just dont see a lot of that anymore. People who have fundamentally different political or ideological, but nonetheless could Work Together and be friends. Guest it does seem like ideology has taken a hold of everything, and. Host right. Guest and i think, if people let that happen theyre missing out on encounters with a lot of great people and friendships. In their case, they focused on what they had in common. It was an awful lot. They were born in well, my dad was born in trenton, but grew up in new york around the same time. They had that in common. I think that was an element to their friendship. They both loved opera and they had cameo appearances in opera together and their spouses were great friends, too. My mother is a great cook. Justice ginsburgs husband marty was basically a gourmet chef and Justice Ginsburg and my dad both liked to eat, apparently, so that was another element of their friendship, that i really think kind of just by focusing on those things they had in common, with how the friendship thrived. I think somebody asked my father once, basically, you know, how could you like Justice Ginsburg so much when you disagree about everything. He said whats there not to like . Just a wonderful person. Host yeah, except her views on the law. Guest yes, exactly. Host i saw them together at gw a couple of years ago on the stage and they could also joke with each other. Justice scalia would say, you know, we took that trip to india together. It was a big problem for ruth because we were on this elephant and i was up in the front and all of her feminist friends didnt like the fact that she was sitting behind me and as he finished, Justice Ginsburg in that sort of modest way of hers, she said i was told it was a matter of the redistribution of weight. [laughte [laughter] which he got a kick out of. Guest thats good. Host they could joke and have fun. Tell me, this book, it really is full of wonderful speeches on all kinds of different topics. Tell me what some of your favorites are. Guest well, its hard to narrow it down to a handful. I think, obviously, the legal speeches are probably the ones that we hope will kind of secure his legacy, but theres so much more there was so much more to him in life and i think thats the great thing about this collection, that you see so much of that. So, a couple of my favorites, one, one of my favorites is one for the sake of this collection, we just call the arts. This is one of my favorites because the context is fascinating. I didnt know he delivered this speech so i was fascinated when i discovered it. He delivered it at the Julliard School in new york city. School of, you know, very wellknown school of the arts. And it was on the occasion of the schools 100th anniversary. There was a symposium about the arts in american society. And the schools president now that my father was interested in the opera, and knew he was a conservative justice who would offer opinions that wouldnt be heard very often in new york city. And so he thought, on the one hand, my father would fit right in, on the other hand he might challenge the audience a little bit. So to his great credit, he reached out to my dad, and he tells that my dad was skeptical at first, but was convinced and decided to participate. Im really glad he did. He was part of a fascinating panel. Other speakers on this panel were david mccullough, the Pulitzer Prize winning historicalion, i believe, and opera singer rene fleming and brad way singer steven son heim. A disparate group of people. Im not sure that my father knew that steven sonheim wrote on west side story and i think he wrote into a dissent, but definitely some court opinion. But i dont think my father realized that at the time, but i wished they had a chance to talk about that during their encounter. Apparently, my father got an along with him very well before the speech and at the speech itself, he tells it went over great. And it was faculty, students, artists and law students from around the city and my father begins the speech by kind of recognizing how out of place he is. How incongruous his presence there is. Let me find the beginning, its pretty great. Host i remember that one. Guest he said, im happy to be here this afternoon, and to tell you the truth, somewhat surprised to be here this afternoon. Todays program reads like some sort of iq test. Which of the following is out of place . Diva, author, composer, lawyer . So, he begins, i think, its a brilliant speech because of kind of begins with this selfdeprecating humor and he does that a lot in his speech. Host what am i doing here . Exactly. And then he explains why lawyers are, in fact, important to artists and create the conditions in which the arts can thrive, for example, through contract law and things like that. So, he eventually kind of wins the audience over and he refers to we lovers of the arts, to kind of get them on his side a little bit, and brilliant rhetoric, i think. But that second half of the speech, he challenges them by saying, by discussing the First Amendment. And he says, you know, we lovers of the arts like to believe that all matter of the arts would be protected by the First Amendment, by freedom of speech. In fact, thats not the case. And my father goes on to explain why some of the arts, everybody in that room would like, dance, for example, would not actually be protected by the freedom of speech. And his argument was that through an originalist interpretation of the freedom of speech, that phrase meant something i can it to the founders and didnt in