U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died
I usually disagreed with Scalia, but I have tons of respect for the man. He&#x27;s always struck me as one of the best examples of the idea that two intelligent, educated people with reasonable minds may legitimately come to different conclusions about the same set of facts.<p>I also found when reading transcripts of oral arguments that Scalia was really terrifically funny pretty often.<p>Once, I was doing some computer repair work for an attorney who was interviewing Scalia extensively for a book about Supreme Court oral arguments. It was late in the day, and all the other staff were gone.<p>The phone rang, and the attorney asked me if I would answer it since I was close, and tell whoever it was that he was busy. I picked it up and the voice on the other end said, &quot;let me speak to x.&quot; I said he wasn&#x27;t in. The voice says, &quot;I know he&#x27;s in. Let me speak to him <i>please</i>.&quot; I tried to deflect again, and he finally says, &quot;This is Justice Scalia. I guarantee you your boss wants to talk to me.&quot;<p>Without thinking I piped up and said, &quot;Oh, Justice Scalia! You won&#x27;t believe who just walked in the door! Just a second.&quot;<p>Apparently Scalia thought that was hilarious and told the guy to pay me extra for popping off to a Supreme Court justice like that.<p>Edit: as a quick sidenote, I&#x27;d encourage everyone to actually read the oral arguments and the full opinions for important cases as they come up. The media is absolutely terrible about over simplifying or just straight up not getting the issues correct.<p>You will find that there is a hell of a lot of thought that goes into opinions, and there is much less predetermined ideology than the way these things often get painted.