U.S. Supreme Court
‘Dueling Family Forces’ Shaped Scalia’s Ease with Confrontation, Author Says
Posted Nov 13, 2009, 12:56 pm CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Justice Antonin Scalia originally turned down USA Today reporter Joan Biskupic when she asked for an interview for her new book on the justice.
But Biskupic persisted, National Public Radio reports. Biskupic ran into Scalia at a wedding, and she described what she had learned during a trip to Trenton, N.J., his childhood home town. “He got intrigued by what I was finding," Biskupic told NPR.
Biskupic had learned about Scalia’s father, who immigrated to the United States at the age of 15, learned the language, and went on to earn a doctorate in romance languages. Before the end of her project, Biskupic landed 12 interviews with the justice.
Scalia was an only child, the only offspring from two striving immigrant families, Biskupic told the American Constitution Blog.
“I think his family background produced some of the tensions you see in him today. His mother's and father's sides had two distinct personalities,” Biskupic told ACS. “The mother's family was filled with storytellers, people who lived large and worked in sales, in politics, and fully embraced life. His father was more scholarly and always had his nose in a book. … Scalia's father did not like jokes or any silliness and tended to be more demanding. I write in the book that these dueling family forces produced a man who was at home with tension and confrontation--and readily generated it.”
Biskupic’s new book is American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
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