A Colossus on the Court

A decade after the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, veteran journalist James Rosen has released the second volume of his magisterial biography of the great jurist, entitled Scalia: Supreme Court Years, 1986-2001. The first volume, reviewed here by former Scalia clerk Ed Whelan, was widely acclaimed for its thoroughness, “sparkling prose,” and deep mastery of the legal intricacies that animated Scalia’s career—rare for a non-lawyer author. Whelan praised the first volume, observing that “Rosen’s research is exhaustive and meticulously documented across 65 pages of endnotes.” Reviewers also noted that Rosen’s treatment of his subject, while not hagiographic, was refreshingly fair-minded compared to previous “poison pen” biographies of Scalia authored by Joan Biskupic (2009) and Bruce Allen Murphy (2014).