professor randy barnett who was in the room and i together run and a original is him boot camp each summer. and justice scalia was gracious to meet with hardship -- to meet with our students. we asked the question how is it ,ou came to the famous speech that we should move away from our and ash from our original intent. move away from our original intent. he said, i was trying to move away from statutory limitation. that our obvious approach to constitutional interpretation should mesh with our approach to statutory interpretation. in preparation for this event, i slogged through the 101 opinions when youar on westlaw search for the phrase legislative history and the author judge antonin scalia up. one or two things become apparent. justice scalia almost never relied on legislative history in a decisive way in an opinion he wrote, although he did use in several history opinions. over and over and over again the justice said that the use of isislative history inappropriate in this case because there is no ambiguity to resolve. that brings us to an interesting question. what we mean by ambig

and randy barnett, who i see tonight, constitutional law professor at georgetown university, calls justice thomas a fearless originalist. he honors the constitution at -- as it was written. he elevates the original meaning of the text above preston. -- above precedent. in other words, he puts the founders above dead justices. [laughter] [applause] i might add, he puts them above alive justices as well. [laughter] [applause] i think the best test of anyone appointed to any court is how the person who appointed him feels about it. that is why a think we should all be interested to know that president bush, in talking about him, said this about him, and how proud he was for this election. he said, while justice thomas is known both for his consistently sober demeanor on the bench, and his thoughtful and respected jurisprudence, he is also widely admired for his want him on his colleague, law clerks, and the court stuff. he wound up by saying, he is a very good man, and that's why i'm so pleased to introduce to you tonight that good man, clarence thomas. [applause] joining him tonight in this