ACSblog recently caught up with Joan Biskupic, who has covered the Supreme Court for 20 years, including for The Washington Post and USA Today. Biskupic kindly discussed her latest work with ACSblog, American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, about which Harvard Law's Laurence H. Tribe said, "Joan Biskupic has done it again. Having hit a home run in her fine biography of the quintessential centrist justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, Biskupic has now hit it far out of the park with her elegant, insightful, and eminently readable account of the life and constitutional views of the most colorful justice on the Supreme Court's right wing. For anyone who wants to understand the most influential and interesting voice of the most powerful movement in contemporary American law, this book is a must read."
ACSblog: Did your research for American Original yield any surprises?
Joan Biskupic: I found surprises both in the justice's personal background and in his professional life. On the personal side, I had always known that he was an only child who went on to have nine children. But I hadn't known that he was also the only offspring of his generation from two striving Italian immigrant families. That made him a center of attention but also put a burden on him to perform. He never felt that his father was satisfied with him. I was also surprised to find some of the disappointments of his early life. Scalia did not get into Princeton as he had wanted. Later on, he was bitterly disappointed when he was passed over for the U.S. solicitor general job in Ronald Reagan's first term. I became aware of how these setbacks lingered and drove him.