Another reason to remember him.

Minding The Campus reports.

What Scalia Did for Undergrads

Justice Scalia had an important impact among many college students, certainly among mine, and especially among those who often or usually disagreed with his conclusions.

I taught law-oriented classes for thirty-five years—constitutional law and politics, civil liberties, criminal law and justice, jurisprudence and legal theory, and the First Amendment. During this span, Scalia’s opinions were ever-present pedagogical companions in our classes, making him feel like a colleague, even though we never met. More importantly, his impact upon my students can point to what a university should be.

I taught at one of the most notably progressive universities in the country, and many of my students came to class predisposed by the student opinion grapevine to dismiss or disrespect Scalia’s thinking because he was a conservative. But such students were often shaken out their dogmatic slumbers by reading Scalia’s cases, and, hopefully, by noting the due respect—critical as well as appreciative—that I exhibited while leading the discussions.