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.
