One Crazy Summer

T his year has been full of milestone anniversaries related to the life and career of my father, the late Justice Antonin Scalia. February marked the tenth anniversary of his death, and he would have turned 90 in March — occasions for bittersweet remembrances. This summer includes happier anniversaries: it’s been 40 years since his nomination and confirmation.

I was ten years old then and cannot claim I knew the significance of these events at the time, though I could tell something big was going on. On June 17, 1986, the day President Reagan announced Dad’s nomination (along with Justice Rehnquist’s elevation to the position of chief justice), my siblings and I were kept in the dark. It was weird, though, that my stay-at-home mother had gone downtown for undisclosed reasons and that a neighbor’s nanny came over to babysit and make sure my older brother, younger sister, and I were in front of the television that afternoon. When the networks interrupted their regularly scheduled programming for a special report, we saw Dad on TV, standing next to the president.

That night, reporters gathered on the street by our house, waiting for Dad to arrive. My brother recalls that a prank-loving neighbor of ours told them my father drove a luxury car, so they got on their marks whenever a Mercedes or BMW approached and relaxed in disappointment as it passed by. When Dad finally pulled up in his hatchback Nissan Stanza, they nearly missed it.

In Scalia: Rise to Greatness, James Rosen records that Dad “lived in a cocoon” that summer as he prepared for his confirmation. I was oblivious to that process until the hearings began in the first week of August. My eight siblings and I joined my parents on the Hill. We briefly met with South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, in his office and attended the first part of the hearing itself. We took up a couple of rows. The extent of our media training was my mother introducing us to the concept of hot mics — her way of warning us to behave ourselves. Did we want C-SPAN to broadcast our sibling squabbles and stupid jokes? Watching video of the hearing now, I notice how much hair my brothers and I had, how poor my posture was, and that my sisters look like they walked off the set of a John Hughes film.

During opening statements, a few senators joked about how many of us there were. Paul Laxalt, Republican of Nevada, joked that the hearings would be more civil than the ones for Rehnquist the preceding week because, as he said, “I cannot think of one of my colleagues who would dare arouse the ire of the Scalia clan.” John Warner, a Virginia Republican, speculated that Dad’s “ability to successfully manage, together with his lovely wife, a family of nine children may indicate something about his temperament as a future Justice of the Supreme Court.” Some of them warned us that the hearings would be dull and assured us that we didn’t have to sit through all of them.

The committee included some now obscure faces and a few familiar ones, including Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and one Charles Grassley of Iowa — those last two both in their first terms. Senator Joe Biden delivered a five-minute opening statement about what he planned to ask my father. When he finished, Thurmond advised, “There’s no use to tell what you’re going to go into, just wait and go into it later. You’ll save a lot of time.” That got a laugh.

The hearings were a subdued affair. The senators did not put on a show for social media or campaign videos. There were some contentious moments and traps set, but no fireworks. My father was charming, sharp, relaxed — and young! As some people remember, he smoked a pipe for parts of it. The images are, if you’ll excuse the legal jargon, really cool but also reminders of how different the time was.

On the other hand, some questions the senators asked are still relevant. Dad spoke to Senator Kennedy about Humphrey’s Executor, independent agencies, and executive power — issues that came to a head last term in Trump v. Slaughter. Such exchanges made no impression on me, a rising fifth-grader. Instead, I noticed that Dad sometimes said “uh” and “um” when he answered questions — not excessively, but enough to get a chuckle from us, because it was a running joke at family dinners to tease anyone who uttered such filler during conversation. I also remember him telling Senator Kennedy, “I have no agenda.” I like to say that to my siblings whenever possible.

“What are your plans for Thanksgiving?”

“I, uh, have no agenda.”

The photographers got my attention, too, camped out as they were under the rostrum, closer to us than the senators were, clicking away when the nominee puffed his pipe and when my five-year-old sister smiled or leaned against our mother.

Dad would be confirmed, 98–0. His new job changed my life, obviously, but from the perspective of a ten-year-old, things didn’t seem different. I have a vague memory of going to the neighborhood pool the day after the nomination and noticing that people were looking at me and whispering, but that might have been preadolescent insecurity. I can report an increase in neither attention from girls nor wedgies. The nomination and hearings were remarkable events in what otherwise felt like a normal summer of riding my BMX bike with friends, reading box scores, watching reruns, and trying to get infinite lives in Super Mario Bros.

I feel a kinship with the kids of other justices because I assume that many of our experiences were the same. When I see the children of nominees at hearings, I want to tell them to call me if they have any questions or need advice. (“Don’t slouch,” I’d say.) But I also know that things are a lot harder for nominees and their families today — indeed, they were much harder for Reagan’s next nominee, the unfairly maligned Judge Robert Bork, in 1987. Justice Gorsuch, who took my father’s seat on the Court in 2017, said at the end of his hearings, “I regret putting my family through this.” My family didn’t endure anything my dad had to regret.

In July, Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified before Congress about the need to increase funding for Court security. Justice Barrett explained that threats have forced her and her children “to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about,” including why she wore a bullet-proof vest. That was not a question I ever had to ask my dad. For much of his time on the Court, our home address and phone number were listed in the phonebook.

Forty years ago, at the time of Dad’s hearings, there were no originalist justices. It’s fair to say that the Court has improved dramatically since then. I wish my father had lived to see the changes, but there are other developments he’d mourn. I’m grateful my family was spared.