first time the supreme court said that there is an individual right to own firearms, handguns in the constitution and justice scalia wrote that opinion. it was the biggest majority opinion he had had to date in he came out in the court in 1986. i start by last chapter with him at his desk working on that with this pack of marlboro lights at his side and trying to keep it all in check, not respond with any kind of anger to any of the dissenting justices which has been one of his issues all along. i just mention that because i found as i was actually working on this book, he was becoming more and more important. many people said wide justice scalia especially after doing something on justice o'connor who really was a boat that tamplin oyster bellow justices. justice scalia was never known for that but one of the points of my book is that over time, he

became someone it wasn't just dissenting and speaking to his accolades belong the marble walls but was controlling cases and this rally culminated in the washington d.c. handguns case. i thought i would talk a little bit about how i ended up talking to him and getting access, a little bit about what i found that, what surprised me and just hit a couple of highlights and then turn it over to bury. justice o'connor was ronald reagan's first appointment of course, chosen to fulfill his campaign promise of the first woman on the court but as of is doing research on her i realize the real manifestation of ronald reagan's cultural social revolution and the counterrevolution was antonin scalia, appointed in 1986. he was much more the person who ronald reagan wanted on the court so that interested me in justice scalia. i interviewed him for the first

time back in 1990 when i was still with "congressional quarterly." once i decided to do the book on him, i wrote him a letter and i said i've got this contract to do this book. i know we have known each other and i had to admit to him that when i was with "congressional quarterly" he liked me and when i was with "the washington post" he didn't. the actually had read me a note that said even though i am sicilian i have not been holding a grudge against you, john, which i probably put in the paper which i think bothered him more but i right in this letter, justice i'm going to do this book on you and i hope you understand you will peak giving access. he wrote me back a terrific letter that essentially said you can talk to my family, you can talk to my colleagues, you can talk whoever you want but i don't want to talk to you because i don't want to look authorized. so i took several trips to trenton where he was born, to queens where he grew up in the

kept tracking his life, went to archives for the nixon and ford administrations that he had worked in. lot of people don't realize this was a nixon and the first after watergate so i'm finding all of these things about him and calling him dropping him notes saying keep an open mind that you will allow me to come see because as barry knows and any of you who have done books and the brin note that axis is so much of what can make a book. you can see is somebody from a higher altitude but really being down there in spending time with the individual can really make it. coincidentally we ran into each other in the social event. it was the wedding of a mutual friend and bedwetting everybody has got their guard down, people are more relaxed and i went up to him and said justice scalia, just happened to come back to trenton. he starts trying to top my stories and one of my favorite of this moment was i said justice scalia do you know the

first time your father was mentioned in the "new york times" was 1934? ecat a very distinguished father. the father had actually come to america from sicily and had known hardly any english and then gone on to earn his ph.d. at columbia and become a teacher of romance languages at brooklyn college. his mother was quite distinguished and had won a gary petraeus fellowship to florence in 1934. i said it was noted in the "new york times." isn't that cool? he says to me, did you know that i was conceived on that trip? [laughter] i thought no amount of research, no amount of research could have got me that detail. and his wife marine, who is a wonderful woman who he met when he was at harvard law school, she came up to me and started telling war stories. and that she was the one, one other bit of background on this really amazing italian-american who has gone on to contribute so

much to the law as justice john paul stevens says, for better or for worse but she said to me when we were talking about his family, she said i know you know he is an only child, which i do. she said the know that he was almost-- also the only offspring of his generation out of these tewes driving italian families, this was the only child produced of this generation which i think is also instructive for his personality. anyway after that moments after this mutual friend's wyden he started calling me for information about his family because i had done all of this research and i think he also, i actually think he felt sorry for me going up to trenton so much and i said gosh with justice o'connor i could go to phoenix in palo alto. , so he started letting me come to his office and we ended up with a dozen interviews, and i have to say he never hold back from his most controversial

statements. in fact that was one of the things that unsurprising is he cannot even stronger. at i said what about thesis said from the bench he would say i know that bothered some people but it got their attention, so on religion and race and issues that frankly a lot of people find troubling and that got him certainly some critical press coverage and law review commentary, he did not back away from it at all and did that came on much longer so i have to save the access that the ended up giving me was quite helpful. he has one surviving into lives in the trenton area of the happen to be-- she was 12 when he was born so she remembered him quite well and was his baby sitter. she said he was crying all the time but this is a 12-year-old taking care of her nephew which can't have been all that much fun. anyway i did a lot of research for her and also to his fellow

justices, who were quite candid and open about him, and i think some of the mite know that his closest friend on the supreme court is a liberal, risk hands burd. they met in the 70's. they both came from the east coast. they are both academic types. they served together on the washington d.c. court appellate court, known as the district of columbia circuit than they used to pass each other's opinions back-and-forth for grammar, corrections, the kinds of thing you do and academia. in fact when i asked him about this relationship, which to many people seem strange because he is such a conservative then she is a liberal. he said we both started out as academics. we both took academics very seriously and during her confirmation hearings are remember senator herb kohl said what is with u.n. scalia? she said he is the only one kent-- back in make me laugh,

which i thought was funny. [laughter] any way she was quite helpful in this book and said you know i love him but sometimes i could strangle him and went on to talk about how she thinks his legacy wooden door, which actually she thinks that his approach is so far to the right that it will not endure. as i said right now i think he is prevailing. i think he has attained the apex of his legal career in part because of having the vote of chief justice john roberts and the second u.s. the soucy justice, samuel alito both appointees of george w. bush but they certainly have given him votes that he didn't have 21st art it out. justice john paul stevens who is likely to be our next retired justice who is going to turn 90 in april but is so sharp, it will be a real loss to the nation when he does leave. he is quite active still let the court. he said to me, that he really

admire scalia forest bashum, what he has been able to to to the law but one point in one of our conversations he said, some of it has been destructive. as many of the you know thubron the opposite sides of bush v. gore. justice scalia voting for richard george w. bush and justice stevens riding a strong dissent on behalf of the arguments from then vice president al gore. finally i will mention one other colleague of his and that is justice thomas to a lot of people say what is he really like? he does not talking dahlen korte. but i have to say he is quite talkative. he is quite open both for the o'connor bookend the justice scalia book was quite generous with this time. he really wanted to make clear to me in our conversations that you should not regard the tubeless is the same. we both believe in originalism and in fact for those of you who might not know what that legal method is, just a little pun in

the title, american original, justice scalia's legal philosophy is that you should interpret the constitution with the understanding in mindset of the framers of the constitution and go back to the 18th-century. justice thomas describes to that also but he says we are so different. we are just a different from where we come from, the way we act in the book we talk and don't consider is the same. one time we were talking lifestyle issues and he says look aye hallman brit for the nebraska cornhuskers. i don't think scalia has ever watched a football game. he said he goes into his office and put on this opera music. it is a job. i think justice thomas was minimizing his investment but i do have to say that justice scalia is very much committed to what he does and that was the main theme that came from his colleagues was that he is somebody who is committed,

highly energized. he is 73, which in supreme court justice years is quite young and he sees many years ahead of him despite the fact that the this still smoke, drink and eat a lot of great italian food. finally, i guess the thing i would close within this kind of segues into what barry friedman is going to talk about is this moment or the court is set and how the public regards it. if you think of the future of this court-- which is have the first appointee of barack obama and sonia sotomayor who essentially succeeds another person overseeing liberal philosophy, david souter and the next person who will probably leave this justice john paul stevens probably to be succeeded by another liberal and it will be a wash, but he will have consistently five very strong conservatives, antonin scalia, samuel alitha, chief justice john roberts, clearance thomas and for the most part anthony kennedy.

you have got a pretty core group for the average age right now is a decade younger than the average of the liberal so we will hear from barry now and then we will ask each other couple of questions and then i hope he will have some questions to. >> it is great to be here at the miami book fair. this will lived you if you don't have small children but i got to have my picture taken with my young daughters live, olivia the ped so it was a special moment. [laughter] i am thrilled to be here with john who has written a wonderful book about justice scalia. i stayed up too late to many evenings, i could not put it down so i'm thrilled to be here to sort of follow-up because it book mr. inouye's is a puzzle that i think my book tries to answer which she makes clear in her book that just as khalia is really a uniquely strong conservative, outspoken voice on the court. and even though he is unique in his outspokenness the fact of the matter is, as jones says there are five strong

conservatives on the corso one of the question is why drought so much of his career he has been in the sense? here's an interesting statistic for you. since 1968 when richard nixon ran against the libro warren court threatening to appoint a strict constructionist to the core republican presidents have appointed 13 justices and democrats have appointed three of whom are sitting on the court right now so one of the questions you might ask yourself is why is so much of justice scalia's ideal to which has been part of republican party platforms over and over on issues like abortion or affirmative action, why has now become the law of the land of my book and diverse to answer that question by suggesting an answer that i hope is a little surprising to folks which is public opinion. diptheria my book, the idea of my book is ultimately the supreme court is accountable to public opinion in a matter you appoint to the court in a matter what it is they believe in the final analysis the court is not going to stray very far from

public opinion. i hope that surprises you. we tend to think about the supreme court in terms of being independent from the of the branches in from the public, judicial independence is an important part of the american story about who we are in it back there to use a dot tesla independents that have been prominent from the beginning of american history. one of them loves it. one of the seas the justices as he rose up to protect constitutional rights whether this the first amendment, brown versus board of education and their independence allows them to do that. the other side they to come complaints about judicial and activism come as a like the justices are doing. can do anything about it. there were is the last word and you will notice the matter which of these two views you happen to subscribe to whatever queue you happen to subscribe to the fact of the matter is they are both inconsistent with the idea that the court follows the will of the public.

so, mine is vibrating in my pocket, so-- it is a hazard of our lives. [laughter] so the question is, is this true that the court follows the will of the people, the american public and how did it get to be a case? was it always this way? is a question i've always had and i was taught unskeptical, so i decided to into the question. in fact, the short version of this is i said that to insert one day after had been tendered as an academic.