Mark Joseph Stern argues that a crucial shortcoming of John Strand’s play The Originalist is its out-of-date portrayal of Scalia as “a principled conservative, a brilliant and complex man who resists partisan classification.” Nowadays, however, Scalia’s “ideology…looks less conservative than Republican…Twenty years ago Scalia was the unpredictable justice, the renegade who thought both flag burning and corporate campaign contributions deserved free-speech protections. Today he looks a lot more like the Fox News justice, ruling however the Obama administration wishes he wouldn’t.”
Stern also doesn’t buy that the “hard-line anti-gay” Scalia would knowingly hire a lesbian to clerk for him: “Would the same justice who unapologetically compared gay Americans to drug dealers, prostitutes, and animal abusers really be so tolerant in his personal life? Of course not. The Originalist wants us to imagine Scalia as a lovable contrarian and a warmhearted grump whose judicial opinions often lie worlds away from his real-life habits. There is simply no evidence that this portrayal is accurate.”
