Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia found dead at 79

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<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative and most provocative member of the Supreme Court, has died, leaving the high court without its conservative majority and setting up an ideological confrontation over his successor in the maelstrom of a presidential election year. ...</span></span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Scalia used his keen intellect and missionary zeal in an unyielding attempt to move the court farther to the right after his 1986 selection by President Ronald Reagan. ...</span></span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">A smoker of cigarettes and pipes, Scalia enjoyed baseball, poker, hunting and the piano.</span></span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">He was an enthusiastic singer at court Christmas parties and other musical gatherings, and once appeared on stage with Ginsburg as a Washington Opera extra.</span></span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Ginsburg once said that Scalia was "an absolutely charming man, and he can make even the most sober judge laugh."</span></span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">She said that she urged her friend to tone down his dissenting opinions "because he'll be more effective if he is not so polemical. I'm not always successful."</span></span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">He could be unsparing even with his allies. </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">...</span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The only child of an Italian immigrant father who was a professor of Romance languages and a mother who taught elementary school, Scalia graduated first in his class at Georgetown University and won high honors at the Harvard University Law School. ...</span></span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From 1977 to 1982, Scalia taught law at the University of Chicago.</span></span>

<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">He then was appointed by Reagan to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Scalia and his wife, Maureen, had nine children.</span></span>

Cox Media Group