ARCHIVE - MB Talks To Chris Scalia, The Son Of Antonin Scalia

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show. It was an absolute honor to
get to meet one of my heroes, Antonin Scalia, Justice
Antonin Scalia, the greatest Supreme Court justice of my lifetime.
It was in nineteen ninety five and I was staying
at the University Club and Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas

(00:22):
were members at the University Club. I was sponsored by
a fellow named Richard Minider, who went on to be
an editor at the Wall Street Journal. He headed a
British paper, headed a European paper. He's written multiple books.
He's a conservative writer, thinker, talker. And I had a

(00:43):
friend in law school named Angela Halsey now Angela Wallat.
She married a prominent doctor who is very very well
regarded at Johns Hopkins Hospitals. And Angela was a dear
friend of mine and my wife, and she introduced me
to Richard. And I was clerking for a firm in
DC called Hyman, Phelps and McNamara, and I took up

(01:06):
residence at the University Club, and was it ever in honor.
I was right next door to the Russian Embassy, and
we later learned that the CIA was using the University
Club to spy on the Russian Embassy. But it was
an all mill club where senators and Supreme Court justices.
It was very difficult to get in, very influential people,
kind of William F. Buckley kind of people. And I

(01:28):
met Justice Scalia over dinner with evening at a cigar dinner.
Took a picture with him and Clarence Thomas. I'm in
between the two of them, and I asked him, because
I'm not shy, if I might be able to visit
his Supreme Court chambers, and he said I'd be honored,
and so he said, why don't you come tomorrow at
four o'clock. And so this was in the evening. I

(01:51):
had to go to work at the law firm, and
my wife was in town visiting, as luck would have it,
and she wanted to go with me, of course. So
I went to the newspapers before the Internet, and I
found a photographer and I called the guy, said I
need you to meet me from the Supreme Court chambers

(02:13):
and I need you to photograph this event. So we
go in and I said Justice Scalia would be okay
if I take photos, if I have a photographer, and
he said I'd be honored. So he comes in and
he shows us you couldn't see there were parts of
the chambers you couldn't take photographs, but he took lots
of photographs with me and my wife, and they still
hang on my wall to this day. The respect I

(02:35):
have for renting of Scalia is just off the charts.
But I think it couldn't have been easy to be
his child, right, I mean, he's this man is a
god man to people like me. So about seven years
ago I spoke to his son Chris. He had written
a book called Scalia Speaks. Reflections on Law, Faith and

(03:01):
a Life Well Lived. Here's the tagline. This definitive collection
of beloved Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's finest speeches covers
topics as varied as the law of faith, virtue, pastimes,
and his heroes and friends. Featuring a forward by longtime

(03:23):
friend Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and an intimate introduction by
his youngest son. This volume includes dozens of speeches, some
deeply personal, that have never before been published. If that
doesn't make you want to read the book, then hopefully
this interview will including Justice Scalia's deep and abiding faith

(03:47):
and how it made him so much of the man
he was enjoy. Those of you who know me well
know that there is a photograph very proud of that
hangs in my on my wall here at the station.
There is a similar but different photograph that hangs on

(04:09):
the wall at my home, in my study, and the
star of those photographs is antonin Scalia, when I was
a wee willy law student, he granted me an audience
and I hired a photographer to follow me there, and
my wife, who was a practicing lawyer she'd just come
out of law school, was there and we spent well

(04:32):
over an hour in his chambers, and he was fascinated
because my wife is Indian, he was fascinated. He had
just been that summer before to India where he had
sat with the Supreme Court of India. Throughout law school,
he was my hero. I would read his opinions, I
would learn everything I could about him, and he's who
I most wanted to grow up and be like as

(04:53):
a lawyer. His passing unexpectedly deprived us an opportunity of
him in his twilight years, really getting an opportunity to reflect,
which I looked forward to. But now a much needed
and much anticipated book has been written by his son,
Christopher J. Scalia goes by Chris. It's called Scalia Speaks,

(05:15):
Reflections on Law, Faith and Life Well lived. Chris, an
honor to have you on. What made you want to
write this book?

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Thanks for having me on, Michael, It's my pleasure. Well,
first of all, I did very little writing. Fortunately, my
father did most of the hard work. I just had
to select, along with my co editor, Ed Whalen, who
clerked for my father, just select which speeches were the
best ones. And that was difficult in its own right.

(05:45):
But you know, we wanted we wanted to make sure
that my father's ideas found their way, unfiltered, to as
many people as possible after his death, and a collection
like seemed the best way to do that. So we collected.
We read through a couple hundred of his speeches and

(06:07):
were amazed by the variety of the speeches as well
as the high quality. Not just I mean we knew
that the speeches would be good, obviously, but pretty much
all of the speeches were good. So it was really
difficult to choose which not to include here. And obviously
there are a lot of wonderful speeches in which he
sets forth his approach to interpreting the law in the Constitution,

(06:31):
and those are probably the most important as far as
hope securing his legacy goes. But there are twelve speeches
about that. Most of the speeches there are nearly fifty
in this collection are about very different things. There's a
great speech in here about the games and sports he

(06:53):
played as a kid in Queens. There's a great speech
in here also about turkey hunting. He was a big
fan of hunting and turkey hunting in particular, and he
delivered a speech to a group of turkey hunters. So
this collection, we're hoping is of course going to be
of interest to people who admired him as a justice,

(07:14):
But this is not for law students alone. This is
not for legal scholars. All of these speeches, including the
ones and the most law heavy speeches, are going to
be accessible to anybody.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Did he like giving speeches.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Oh, he loved it. I think he liked it in
part because as far as the legal speeches go, they
were an opportunity for him to persuade people. You know,
he loved arguing and he was pretty good at it,
and so the speeches were an opportunity to persuade. And
again an opportunity to persuade kind of unfiltered. Some are

(07:51):
a lot of the ideas he presents in these speeches.
He also presented in opinions, but opinions are necessarily for specialists. Really,
I mean, he did it. He tried to write. He
used to say that he wrote opinions for law students,
but and he did a great job of that. Law
students love reading his speeches. They'd offer his opinions. They
would often go to him first, as you probably.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Know I did.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
But the problem with opinions in that regard is that
they have to be really focused specifically on a certain case,
and they're laden with footnotes and all that, and they
have to be pretty formal. These speeches were an opportunity
for him to kind of exercise different different muscles. You know,
he was He was a He was a ham there's
no other way of putting it. He liked performing. He

(08:32):
played Macbeth in his high school performance of that play.
He was a president of Georgetown's theater group when he
was there. You probably know that he had a couple
of cameo appearances and operas. And he was a great
joke story, great storyteller, and these speeches give him more
of a chance to display that side of his personality

(08:53):
than legal opinions do well.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
And and I think for me, I had him up
on this pedestal as this great man of law and thought,
but to learn later in life. I was reading a
Washington Post piece about you or that you wrote last year.
It was called my father antonin Scalia. And one of
the things that surprised me the most. There were a
lot of things that I knew about his friendship with

(09:18):
Ruth beder Ginsburg and all those, but was that he
developed a friendship with Ricky Skaggs, and that just seems
so out of character. And I loved that about him.
It was it made him real to me.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, he got Ricky Skaggs was is still great to
my mother and great to my family. But yeah, one
of my last memories of my father is going to
a Ricky Skaggs concert with him. And then shortly after
he died, I went to concert with him with my mom,
a Ricky Skagg's concert and it was very moving. He
dedicated a song to my family. It was it was

(09:51):
very powerful. But my father, yeah, he was, I mean,
he obviously he went to elite schools, and he was
on the Supreme Court. But he you know, he wasn't
an elitist, you know, in the stereotypical way. He loved
getting out of Washington. He loved, as I said, turkey
hunting and all kinds of hunting because it gave him

(10:12):
a connection to it, kind of kept him grounded with,
you know, much of the rest of America in a
way that you know, staying put in DC wouldn't do.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Did it give you? Chris Kalia as our guest, the
book is Scalia speaks reflections on law, faith and life
well lived. Did it give you some comfort that he
passed while doing one of the things he loved the most, hunting?

Speaker 2 (10:32):
It did? Obviously, he died very far away from home,
and we didn't get a chance to say goodbye. Nobody
wants that. But he died peacefully, and he died doing
something he loved, so that that was a comfort to us. Definitely.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
When you got the news, what goes through your mind
this great man who also happens to be from a
purely selfish perspective, Dear old dad, what was your immediate thought?

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Well, yeah, obviously it was a gut punch and I
heard from my brother. He called me. He called me,
and uh I answered the phone jokingly as you kind
of as you often do with the brother. And I
could tell immediately that something was wrong, just by his
tone and how concerned he sounded right away. Yeah, it
was it was disbelief. I really didn't believe it. Uh

(11:23):
you know, obviously he wasn't a young man, but but
I just none of us saw it coming. So we
family gathered quickly, and there was some comfort in being
with my families as uh as quickly as we could.
Within a couple of hours, we're all together, and that
that was some comfort. But yeah, it's just no, I guess,

(11:44):
no different in most ways than than anybody who finds
out that a loved one has suddenly died. We knew
that there would be kind of political, uh consequences to it,
but we weren't. That wasn't our focus. Obviously. It was
just losing losing my father and my mom losing her husband.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Chris Kalia as our guest. The book is called Scalia
Speaks Reflections on law, faith and life well lived. Antonin
Scalia changed the United States Supreme Court during his tenure there,
and he changed America through his jurisprudence, his faith, his spirit,

(12:25):
his writings, his love of our country. And we'll talk
more about that coming up next the Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
There's a lot of it going around. They talk about
a dysfunctional government because there's disagreement, and they and the
Framers would have said, yes, that's exactly the way we
said it up. We wanted this to be power contradicting
power because the main ill that beset us, as as

(12:56):
Hamilton said in The Federalists, when he talked about a
separate Senate, he said, yes, it seems inconvenient, but inasmuch
as the main ill that besets us is an excess
of legislation, it won't be so bad.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Our guest is Chris Kalia. He is one of I
guess it's nine children, is that right?

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Nine children and at current count thirty nine my mom
and dad of thirty nine grandkids.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
My goodness, good Catholic family, as John Gaffigan says, good
Catholic family. Chris Scalia is one of nine children born
to Antonine and Marine Scalia, and he has published a book,
I guess you don't say written because it's mostly a
culmination of his speeches Scalia speaks reflections on law, faith,

(13:42):
and life well lived. Where were these speeches actually archived
or kept? Where did you find these?

Speaker 2 (13:50):
We got these all from his office, from his chambers.
He has got in touch with his longtime secretary, Angela,
who had them hard copies of them, of most of them,
and then a few discs, actually a box, a box
of floppy discs, if you can believe it. So we

(14:11):
read through about I think about two hundred speeches. There
was some overlap on the speeches. Some would have, you know,
different beginnings, but the same center. And but but for
the most part they obviously all the speeches and here
are distinct, but so there was some overlap. But but

(14:32):
I would say probably two close to two hundred distinct speeches.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Antonin Scalia is, to my reckoning, you know, overwhelmingly influential
in American jurisprudence because of his intellectual prowess, and his consistency,
and his ability to articulate originalism and and and his

(14:56):
his is staying true to our constitution. And there is
a cultish following. I mean in law school, the Federalist
Society folks, and to this day have folks, and we
still revere him in this way, maybe even more so
after his passing. And then you have folks on the
left that just consider him this awful person because they

(15:18):
can't understand what he was saying, or they disagree with him,
and they make it personal. As you read through these
speeches and having lived a life with him, what do
you hope people will take away from antonin Scalia that
they didn't already know.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
I think that they will get a fuller picture of
what he was like as a person. For one thing, again,
because the variety of speeches and the topics he covers,
you get to see that he was thoughtful and important
for many reasons apart from the law. There's a section

(15:55):
of speeches, for example that we called on faith, and
the religious speeches he delivered were very important. But then
there are a number of speeches about education. There's a
great speech about how to write well, and of course,
and then also you get a sense of what kind
of a friend he was and what he valued in friends.

(16:16):
The last section is a set of speeches about heroes
and friends, so heroes like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln,
but also friends as sorry. A roast of Justice Ginsburg,
which is very funny, and then farewells to more obscure
friends he had, which are just beautiful. You get a
sense of what he was like as a person, what
he valued in friendship, what he admired about the people

(16:39):
he knew. I was just gonna say so, even people
who admire him are going to see him as a
fuller man here, and people I think his critics misunderstand
what he was up to. These speeches give him a
chance to present the case for originalism more fully, and
particularly his beliefs about the role of his faith in judging.

(17:06):
I think the left in particular has a very distortive,
distorted view of what he thought his Catholic belief meant
for his judging. And spoiler alert, it did not mean
that he thought he should interpret the law based on
Catholic teaching. In fact, just the opposite. He knew that
he had to put his Catholic faith aside and interpret

(17:29):
the laws as they were written and as history and
tradition dictated. His Catholic beliefs had nothing to do with,
for example, his anti Roe position. It was because he
believed as he did about Roe v. Wade, because there's
nothing in the law in the clear words of the
Constitution or the history of it, to defend or to

(17:52):
grant basically unlimited access to abortion. His Catholic, as he
says in a couple of speeches, his Catholic faith isn't
the reason for him belief.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
There.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
My guest is Chris Kalia. He's the one of nine
children of Antonin Scalia, and the book is Scalia speaks
reflections on law, faith and life well lived. Let me
ask you to take off the editor and author hat
for a moment and be anton and Kalia's son and
talk about you righte that he drove the family to
Mass every Sunday, that he brought his well worn Roman.

(18:25):
I don't know how you pronounce this missile. Missile, Yeah, missile,
I'm Southern Baptist. We don't have a missile. And you
talked about how the pages were wrinkled from holy water,
and you talked about the importance of the homily to
him or the sermon to him, and that if he
liked a sermon, he would go up and tell the
priest that talk a bit. If you would ask his

(18:46):
son about the role of Catholicism and his faith to.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Him, it was always clear to us that he took
it seriously and not just because there were nine kids,
though that is evidence, I guess.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
He.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
You know, it was interesting. He never he and my
mom didn't sit up. I should put it this way.
They rarely sat us down and lectured us about religion,
but they just we could tell by how they lived
by putting an emphasis on getting to church every Sunday
and on Holy Days, saying grace before meals every night,

(19:25):
making and my dad making a point of being home
for dinner every night. And it was just, you know,
there was the house was kind of it was not
an uptight and repressive atmosphere at all, as I think
maybe that might be the stereotype of a devoutly religious house.
It wasn't like that it was, but it was you know,

(19:46):
ingrained as part of the house, and you know, we
just seeing my dad pray at Mass was always very
moving because he was always very intent about it. And
I mentioned the importance he placed on the homily during Mass,
but also the music. You could see the joy he
experienced when he sang a hymn he really liked, and

(20:07):
the pain that it would cause him to hear him
that he didn't like, and I don't know. I've just
obviously I loved him growing up, and I admire him
more and more as I get older and start a
family of my own. Just how difficult it is too.
I don't have nine children, but you know, just getting
to the kids to church every week and making time

(20:29):
with them a priority, and being good at your job
and all those things, and being a good, prayerful person.
It's difficult. And I admire my dad more and more
every really passing day for what he accomplished.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
You note in the piece you wrote for the Washington
Post of you and your brothers and sisters, we could
have done without the weekends he made us work in
the yard. I once tried to beg off mowing the
lawn by pointing out that I had a cross country
meet that weekend. So he did it himself, after reminding
me that a Supreme Court justice probably had better things

(21:01):
to do as well. So will your kids work in
the yard? Is that an experience that.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
No? I think? So I do again. This is one
of those things I appreciate more now, uh I. I
will make my kids work in the yard because it
teaches you important lessons. And I think that my father
saw that those occasions as an opportunity to teach us
the importance of doing a job right, not taking shortcuts,

(21:31):
and and and kind of working with your hands a
little bit too. Especially, you know, we we wouldn't have
we grew up in the upper middle class suburbs. We
wouldn't have would have been harder for us to get
experiences like that otherwise.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Our guest is Chris Scalia. The book is Scalia Speaks
Reflections on Law, Faith and Life Well Lived. It's a
compilation of previously unpublished speeches by his late father, Court
Justice Atonin Scalia. He is our guest. We will continue
our conversation coming up next. Chris Kalia is our guest.

(22:16):
The book is called Scalia Speaks Reflections on Law, Faith
and Life Well Lived. Chris, when you when you look
through these speeches, to what extent do you feel, I mean,
some of what Supreme Court justice is right, I mean,
as influential as it is on the lives of our populace.
Some of what they write is in a language that

(22:39):
is so high brow that it's inaccessible to the everyman
whose life is is being affected by that. Do you
get a sense in his speeches that he's trying to
to to explain these things in ways that the that
the layman can understand.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Absolutely, that was crucial to him, and that's one of
the reasons he spoke to so many organizations, again, not
only legal He would deliver his legal speeches not only
to legal organizations, but to the general public as well,
and especially in this collection, we for exactly that the
reason you just mentioned, We thought it was especially important

(23:16):
to only include speeches that non specialists would find it interesting. Again,
specialists will too, but non specialists will find this really
accessible and interesting. He thought it was crucial for a
democracy to thrive, that the people knew what was going on,
and in the case of the Supreme Court, you know,

(23:39):
as you know, his kind of recurring theme was that
the court had seized too much, how power from the
people by departing from what became to be known as originalism,
which was focusing on the original intent, original public meeting
of the constitution and laws, and by departing from that,

(24:00):
the court had taken power away from the legislature and
kind of determined declared itself the arbiter of what a
society's morals are. And my father argued again and again
that's the people's job. We need the judges needed to
keep that power in the hands of the people. That said.
Kind of a corollary of that belief was that it

(24:21):
was crucial for the people to be informed and to
be engaged, to be educated about their government and their
national history, and to have strong values. A crucial part
of the civic education, he believed, and he pointed to
the Founders as evidence, was that people needed to be

(24:44):
needed to have a strong moral foundation, often, though not necessarily,
but my dad said, often grounded in religion, and there
certainly needed to be room for religion in the public square,
and without those elements, the democracy would struggle.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Chris, when you read through these speeches, I'm sure obviously
you couldn't go to all these and some of these
were new to you. What were some things that came
out that you were surprised by or that you had
not expected.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
A couple of things. First, as I mentioned before, I
was I was surprised by the variety of the speeches,
and one in particular, I mentioned, the turkey hunting one
he delivered a speech at Juilliard's School of the Arts
in New York City. I had no idea he did that,
and it seemed like a pretty It's kind of like
almost like Daniel in the lions Den. Not not a
very hospitable crowd. But I spoke to the college, the

(25:40):
school president who invited him, and he said, yeah, that's
one of the reasons I invited him. I knew the
people there wouldn't hear these ideas otherwise. My father delivered
a great speech about the law and the arts. So
some of the speeches themselves and the audiences were very surprising,
that foremost among them. But I was also surprised by
how funny they were. Obviously I knew my dad was funny,

(26:04):
but the self deprecating humor in these speeches is it's
pretty constant and consistently entertaining. The speech I mentioned before
about the games and sports he played when he was
a kid, begins with a line something like, I am
often asked to what do I owe my athletic prowess?

(26:25):
Which is a great, great line that because nobody he
spent his life sitting on the bench, you know, he
had no athletic.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Prowess, literally sitting on the bench.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Literally sitting on the bench. So I thought that was
just a great way to open a speech to kind
of disarm the crowd with self deprecating humor, just a
great line. I mean, there's so many passages here that
are laugh out loud funny.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
How many speeches are Are the speeches included in their
totality or have you picked and chosen bits of those speeches?

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Almost all of them are in their totality almost not
only a handful have ever been published before. We tried
to have a very light hand with the editing. My
father was an excellent writer, uh and delivered a lot
of these speeches on many occasions, so they were They
were mostly pretty polished. The maybe the greatest exception was

(27:17):
the Turkey hunting speech, which we took from a transcription,
and we edited that one a bit. But for the
most part, we didn't didn't touch them very much.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Forgive me for going fanboy, but he's one of my heroes.
Did he write these speeches in long hand until his
final days?

Speaker 2 (27:35):
I think he took notes on Longhand, but I'm not
even sure about that. I mean, I when I saw
him writing, he was typing. He generally is the typewriter,
I know that's or not the typewriter, the keyboarding computer
in the earlier days it may have been long hand
and typewriter, but by the by the time I really
was paying attention when I saw him writing, it was

(27:57):
at a monitor, much less romantic, I'm afraid.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
But well, no, I'm fascinated by how he did what
he did. One of the things you talk about in
the piece you wrote about him that I read in
Washington Post was the late nights that after spending his
family time, he retired to his study. And everyone knew
Dad had to work, you know, as a Supreme Court
justice with a lifetime appointment. Do you think that he

(28:22):
stood up from the dinner table and left the family
and went into his study because he felt it was
an obligation or do you think that he derived a
great joy from that?

Speaker 2 (28:37):
I think is it possible to say both?

Speaker 1 (28:42):
It is, but I mean they're very different, and I
think one had to have a greater driving force.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
I think it was difficult for him to do that
as consistently as he did. I mean, it was hard
work for him. He enjoyed it absolutely, and he enjoyed
trying to persuade people, but he also saw it as
you know, an obligation of his to because he believed
in these ideas so strongly he needed He knew that
it was he had to constantly make these points and

(29:13):
make these arguments, and you know, writing, writing, changing the
subject slightly. Writing was hard work for him. And I
know that, you know the case with most writers, the
words just don't flow from the fingers onto the keyboard.
He really struggled with it. And you know there's that old,
that old saying. I've heard it attributed to many people.

(29:35):
I don't like writing, but I like having written, and
I think that that's certainly true of my father.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Chris Scalia is our guest. The book is Scalia Speaks,
Reflections on Law, Faith and Life Well Lived. Will have
one more segment with him coming up next. Chriscalia is
our guest. He is one of nine children of the

(30:02):
late Great Anton Scalia, Supreme Court Justice and one of
my great heroes. The book is called Scalia Speaks Reflections
on Law, Faith and Life Well Lived. Chris, I want
to go back to a point we were talking about
in the last segment, and that was that your dad
found it difficult to write, But you know you talk

(30:23):
about having written. He understood the permanence and the influence
of his words. Do you I get the sense in
his writings, and I've spent a lot of time pouring
over them, particularly when I was in law school and
as a young lawyer. I get the sense that he
had sort of a burden, and almost like an Abraham

(30:45):
Lincoln during World War Two type burden of he felt
like there were these things that he knew wouldn't be popular,
but they had to be done. And it's a sense
of service and I don't know, it seems rooted in
a deep sort of Catholics sense as well. But do
you get that sense in reading his speeches or do
you sense that they're sort of lighthearted and he's you know,

(31:06):
he's because he was flippant and he was witty, But
I also sense a very heavy burden in what he
wrote that I have to do this. It would be
easier if I didn't.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
I don't I know what you're you're talking about, especially
in his dissense, and that's natural to come from a
descent because you're on the losing side, and he was,
unfortunately too often doesn't come across really in these speeches.
The speeches are, they're passionate and and he's definitely laying

(31:40):
out his points clearly and trying to persuade people. But
they're they're joyful, they're funny, they're you know, I guess
his descents were often known often called skathing and bitter
and all that stuff by by his critics, but you
don't get that sense from these speeches. He's they He

(32:01):
delivered them in different contexts from it than he was
would be delivering a descent. So uh, I think I
think his attitude was very different in delivering them. Having
said that, you know, he felt obligated to deliver them
again because he knew he needed to keep persuading people
getting it, he needed to keep getting his argument out there.

(32:22):
So there's definitely that sense of obligation in that respect.
But the self deprecating humor and the wit that come
through in these speeches is I think really, even even
in the most argumentative ones, there's there's a real sense
of more of a sense of joy in them and
less of a sense of burdens.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Chris Scalia is Antonin, Marine Antonin and Marine Scalia's youngest son.
I did not realize that when we start our conversation
of the nine. I just noted that in my notes
I note that you are a former English professor. I'm
jealous of that. I've always want to be an English professor.
But you are not a lawyer. Are any of your siblings? Mayers.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
I have two brothers who are lawyers, and then.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, I never had enough burdens. I can't imagine being
a scalia and a lawyer. My goodness.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
I yeah, well they're both. They're both pretty successful too,
They've they've done well for themselves. I think there was that,
you know, they're older than me, so I think there
was that less less of a sense of burden on
them because they had kind of already struck out on
their own by the time Dad was on the court.
It was different for me, I think in part because
I was ten when he became a justice, so yeah,

(33:35):
eighty six, so I had more of a sense of
him as a justice being a more significant part of
my life. But I never really The main main reason
I didn't pursue law is that I just I never
had any interest in it, and and Dad never really
pushed me in that direction at all. He was he
was happy with what I did, and I think he
was he was happy to see me become a professor

(33:57):
because his five there had been a language professor as well.
He taught Romance languages at Brooklyn College. And of course,
as you know, my father was a professor, a law
professor for some time as well, so he had high
esteem for that work.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
What do you think he would have done had he
not gone into law.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Well, he mentions in one of these speeches he had
toyed with the idea of becoming a priest. I think
he would have been a good one, but I'm glad
he didn't because I wouldn't be around. I think he
could have been. Other people have pointed this out. He
could have been a writer. I mean, he's a very
good legal writer, of course, but it's especially clear in

(34:38):
these speeches as well as from his opinions he can
write in so many styles. He would have been a
very good writer. There's one speech in particular here where
it's one of the eulogies or memorials. He describes days
he used to spend with a friend now deceased, and
it's just it's absolutely beautiful. It reads like a classic

(34:58):
short story, and its description of these beautiful days in
gardens in Charlottesville. So I think he would have been
possibly a professional writer would have been a way to go.
But then I don't know if he could have had
nine kids on that didn't come either.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
I'm surprised he could have nine kids on the Supreme
Court justices.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Actually, let me ask you this. When people come up
to you and they hear your name, I mean, it's
a unique name. There's no doubt it's going to be
a relation. What do you hear most often?

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Well, it depends where I am. I went to graduate
school at the University of Wisconsin and Madison, and that
was not a demographic. I guess that really liked my
father very much, so, you know, occasionally I would and
because I was an English professor, people would actually assume

(35:51):
I wasn't related. They would think, well, he's an English professor,
so he can't possibly be related to Justice Scalia, who
wouldn't let his son do that or whatever. I don't know,
So they would sometimes just kind of disparage him, not
knowing that there was a relation. That was rare, but
it did happen occasionally. But then other times people are

(36:12):
you know, are big fans of him and tell me
how much they admire him, and I appreciate the work
he did and thank me. I don't know why they're
thanking me, but they do. So it's you know, you
get a little bit of both.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
You talk about in the piece you wrote that he
would listen to Bach on his headphones in his study
while he was drafting an opinion when he was reading
for fun.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
What did he read when he was reading for fun?
He read. He didn't read really intense stuff. He would
read Tom Clancy, for example, like those he liked. He
liked thrillers, thrillers, spy novels, things like that. He'd read
political magazines too, you know, but that was the stuff

(37:01):
for fun. He also when the stuff he read when
he was younger stuck with him, and he would kind
of guide me in some of my readings too, like
I remember and encouraging me to read Russell Kirk's The
Conservative Mind as kind of a good introduction to conservative thought.
And then Burke's reflections on the Revolutions Revolution in France

(37:23):
was another kind of touchstone for him and central to
I think to his thinking.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Sorry, i'm taking notes. Never never makes for good radio
when you're taking when you're actually listening. Yes, well, we
have come to the close of our time. I have
not read the book. I will look forward to reading
the book. In fact, I'm going to leave here and
go to the bookstore and buy the actual hard copy
instead of my usual book on tape on this one,

(37:50):
and I'm very much looking forward to it, and I
am glad. I will thank you for something that you
do deserve to be thanked for, and that is taking
the time you and Ed to put this together so
that it will be available to the rest of us.
So with that, thank you for being our guest, Chris
and Michael.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
And one last one last word for you. Ed has
been saying that if you think you're going to like
this book, you're going to love it. And I think
that's that's true with you. I think you're going to
like it even more than you think you will.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Well, I enjoy on on on Twitter, and uh yeah,
thank you. I'm a fan of his as well. Thank
you very much, Chris, Thanks Michael, I appreciate it. If
you like the Michael Berry Show and podcast, please tell
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(38:38):
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(39:01):
producer is Chad Nakanishi. Jim Mudd is the creative director.
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Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our

(39:22):
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(39:43):
man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God bless America. Finally,
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