Scalia’s Legacy Lives on in Supreme Court’s Abortion, Gun Cases
- His originalism now deeply ingrained as court transforms law
- Abortion ruling cited norms from 1868, before women could vote
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The seeds of the US Supreme Court’s recent rulings on guns and abortion lie in the legal theories of a justice who died six years ago.
For decades before his 2016 death, Justice Antonin Scalia was the court’s champion of originalism, the approach to constitutional law that hews tightly to the founding fathers’ words. Once backed only by fellow Justice Clarence Thomas, Scalia’s vision now commands a majority on the court and is even invoked by the liberal justices.