The Daily Signal - #471: Christopher Scalia on the Faith of His Father, Antonin Scalia

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

Antonin Scalia was a towering Supreme Court justice who left an indelible mark on America. But he was also a man of deep faith, and that faith continues on with his children. We discuss that faith with Christopher Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court justice and the co-editor of a new book, "On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer."We also cover these stories:-The Supreme Court upholds part of an Indiana law on abortion.-The court also declines to hear a case about transgender students and bathrooms.-Gillette features a transgender boy in a new ad.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, May 29th. I'm Daniel Davis. Antonin Scalia was a towering Supreme Court Justice who left an indelible mark on America. But he was also a man of deep faith, and that faith continues on with his children. Rachel and I had the chance to sit down and discuss that faith with Christopher Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court Justice. Today, we'll play that interview. By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes, and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news.

A controversial Indiana law that required unborn babies remains be burned or buried has been upheld by the Supreme Court. However, the court was silent on the other part of the Indiana law, which said that you could not abort on the basis of gender, a child's race, or whether she has a disability or not. That means a lower court's ruling, which blocked that part of the law from going into effect, remains. Justice Clarence Thomas raised concerns about the court's approach, writing, given the potential for abortion to become a tool of eugenic manipulation, the court will soon need to confront the constitutionality of laws like Indiana's.

He also wrote, from the beginning of birth control and abortion, were promoted as means of effectuating eugenics. The Supreme Court decided on Tuesday that it will not take up a case regarding school policy in a Pennsylvania school district, which allows transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice. This means that a biologically male student may use a bathroom designated for females in Boyertown School District. Some students, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that the bathroom policy violated their right to privacy. According to court documents, lawyers representing the plaintiffs argue that, quote, forcing a teenager to share a locker room or restroom with a member of the opposite sex can cause embarrassment and distress.

The district's policy was a dramatic change from the way locker rooms and restrooms have been regulated for the entire history of public school systems. Missouri may soon be the first state to not offer abortions of a Planned Parenthood clinic is unable to get its license renewed this week. Planned Parenthood is claiming it's wrong that the state require it interview all doctors at the clinic. The state seems to be holding firm that it won't renew the license without that. Planned Parenthood is now suing to keep the clinic in the business of offering abortions. If the license isn't renewed, that clinic could still offer other types of medical care. In the latest case of large corporations enforcing left-wing social views, Netflix, a massive video streaming company, has said it may reconsider production in a state of Georgia

after the state passed a so-called heartbeat bill. The Heartbeat Bill outlaws abortions after a heartbeat is detected in an unborn infant in the womb. A representative Netflix said in a statement to variety that they will work with the American Civil Liberties Union to fight the law in court. The representative also said, quote, given the legislation has not yet been implemented, will continue to film there while also supporting partners and artists who choose not to. Should it ever come into effect, we'd rethink our entire investment in Georgia. Gillette is featuring a transgender boy in its new ad showing her learning to shave from her dad. Growing up, I was always trying to figure out what kind of man I wanted to become,

and I'm still trying to figure out what kind of man that I wanted to become. I always knew I was different. I didn't know that there was a term for the type of person that I was. I went into my transition just wanting to be happy. I'm glad I'm at the point where I'm able to shave. South, South, North, North. East, West, never in a hurry. No.

Right. No, don't be scared. I'm scared. Shaving is about being confident. Oh, you're doing fine. You are doing fine. I'm at the point in my manhood where I'm actually happy. It's not just my self-transitioning.

It's everybody around me transitioning. LGBT group, PFLAG applauded the ad saying, Oh wow, Gillette. We are having all the feels here. As the first and largest organization for parents of LGBTQ people, we thank you for seeing our trans kids and for honoring their affirming dads. Next up, we'll turn it over to Daniel at Resource Bank. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share?

Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at letters at dailysignal.com. Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. Well, we're joined now by Christopher Scalia. He's the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and he recently published a book called On Faith, Lessons from an American Believer. Chris, thanks for being on the podcast with us. Thanks a lot for having me. So I want to ask you first off, what inspired you to write this book?

A couple years ago, you came out with a book called Scalia Speaks, which includes a lot of his speeches on various topics, some on faith, actually. But this one's exclusively about faith. Yeah, he delivered many speeches over the course of his career. And the last collection, Scalia speaks, tries to give kind of a view of him as a man in full. So it covers all sorts of topics, the law, of course, and faith. But a lot of other things like national identity and hobbies and pastimes and things like that. second to second only to his speeches about faith were second only to

speeches he delivered about law in terms of importance I mean he he delivered speeches about faith very often and they were so important to him that he seemed to have been planning putting out a collection before he died he sent a draft to an acquaintance who read over and sent back some notes that he actually sent the notes back to my dad the day before my father passed away. So we're talking about, you know, late in my father's life, a project like this had been on his mind. So we thought it was important to kind of pursue that project, or at least something like it. And taken out of the larger book, I think it's kind of helpful to have just this focus because it gives a sense of in a

different context how significant religious issues were to my father, both legally and personally. But I should add, it's not just speeches in this collection. There are speeches, but there are excerpts from judicial opinions and reflections from family and friends. So Justice Thomas writes a forward to the book and my brother writes the introduction. There's also the sermon my brother delivered at my father's funeral mass is in there and things like that. So you get, like the last collection is kind of giving a full view of my dad, but in this context, the full view of him from a religious angle. So just tell us about his faith and, you know, particularly as you saw it growing up. My brother jokes that in the introduction, he jokes that my, he winces every time somebody calls my dad a devout Catholic because when somebody's devout, it implies something kind of like a passivity or something like that or, you know, walking around with hands folded.

My father was a dedicated Catholic, but there was always, as my brother puts kind of an error of argument to it. he loved reasoning about religion and he didn't see a conflict between faith and reason. He thought that they had to be married in the religious when discussing religion.

But we, so he didn't talk about religion a ton growing up, but it was just always clear to us how important it was to him because of how he acted. And religion was kind of a central focus of our family life. He was always home for dinner and he

always led mass at dinner. Sorry. Not mass. No, my brother would do that later. No, my father led the grace before meals. And that was, he always kind of ran through it. He sounded more like an auctioneer than somebody, you know, like leading a prayer. But it nonetheless left a big impression on us because, you know, this was our family

time together every day and we started it with a prayer. And then there was mass every Sunday. and he usually did the driving and I don't remember being it was never a debate I don't remember anybody fussing about going to mass it's just something we did every week and I think especially now that I have a family of my own

I kind of appreciate how difficult that was how much of an effort that was and but he I said before he didn't lecture us all the time about religion but you know occasionally he would talk to us and because he saved that for kind of important instances, it always left a really big impression. Did your father have a favorite Catholic saint or a favorite prayer that he would always go to?

His favorite Catholic saint would be Thomas Moore. Thomas Moore had a big influence on his life. And Thomas Moore, of course, was the advisor to King Henry, the 8th, who refused to go along with Henry's belief that he could basically just remarry. And my father delivered his speech. pretty often really that's in this collection we call it not to the wise he sometimes called it the two

Thomases contrasting Thomas Jefferson with Thomas Moore and Jefferson was somebody who didn't who edited the New Testament with the razor cutting out on anything involving miracles or revelation so there's no virgin

birth there's no resurrection it just ends with Christ dying and my dad jokes that Jefferson apparently believed that the apostles were making it all up as part of a brilliant plan to get themselves all killed. So on the other hand, Thomas Moore, like Jefferson was a brilliant lawyer, one of the smartest people of his time, but didn't see a contradiction between that intellect and faith. and my father admired Thomas Moore for that reason. And favorite prayer, we actually include that in this collection. And it's a prayer we have on the back of his funeral mass card.

It's called the sushi pay, and I won't read the whole thing, but it's a prayer by St. Ignatius. But my father would often tell me and my siblings, he wouldn't do it often, but he told us separately how much he, liked this prayer, how intense a prayer it was, and again, how much he admired it. I'll just read the first sentence, take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and whole will. Just kind of an ultimate giving of oneself to God's will. And I think that was kind of a beautiful and intense thing for my father. So I think that was probably his favorite prayer.

On the topic of prayer, was there ever a time that he told you guys that he felt like God answered a particular prayer, something that he had been praying for? He never did to me. He never said that to me, and I don't know if he ever did to any other sibling. I know that there were instances in which he was disappointed that things didn't turn out his way, and that perhaps God ignored prayers, but dad was eventually happy that things turned out the way he did. There's a speech in this collection where he describes a couple of those disappointments. Probably the most significant one was when he had hoped to be named by Reagan as Solicitor General and was not. And he thought that was, you know, he was crushed by that, really.

That had been a big professional goal of his. But if he had been named Solicitor General, he never would have been appointed to the Supreme Court. So eventually my father realized that it was a good thing he hadn't been on. or made Solicitor General. And I think he, the lesson he drew from that is that, you know, trust in God's plan. And even in disappointing moments or maybe something good to come of it. And that story, I mentioned that he described that occasion in his speech, but he also told one of my brothers about that episode when my brother was experiencing kind of a major disappointment of his own.

that it really stuck with my father that that that was how God works sometimes. So your dad clearly not only was personally religious but believed that religion was important for society. You know, I think of in the book, he talks about his love of George Washington and how George Washington championed, you know, religion and religious teaching for society. How did your dad see the role of the court in relation to not just religious freedom, but actually you know, the reality of religion in society. My father often spoke about, as you said, the vision the founders had for religion in the public square and in American life.

And that's a point he comes to often in his speeches. And as he saw it, well, as the founders saw it, and as he explained, religion was an important source of virtue for the people. and they needed, government needed to encourage religious belief so that people could be virtuous because for democracy to thrive, for the American experiment to succeed, people needed to be virtuous. And again, religion isn't the only way, but for many people, it is kind of the foundation of virtue. And many of the founders recognize that, and it's kind of an assumption of our government. And my father was frustrated that for several decades, the Supreme Court was moving away from that.

The Supreme Court had traditionally recognized or espoused the same vision that the founders had and kind of given deference to that vision. But more recently, instead of recognizing or being objective between, unbiased between religious denominations, the court was moving towards an emphasis on being not discriminating between religion and irreligion. And my father thought that that was kind of complete aberration from the founder's vision. and he thought that was crucial for the court to recognize that, for example, it would have been fine by the founders for a rabbi to deliver an invocation at a high school commencement ceremony. The Supreme Court ruled while he was on the bench that actually that was a violation of the Constitution. That was a violation of the First Amendment.

It was essentially establishing a state religion. And my dad pointed out, well, I mean, look at all the things that the founders did that were along these lines. You cannot believe that the founders would have thought that was unconstitutional. You can agree. You can decide that's not what our nation should be anymore, but that's up for the citizens to decide, not for the justices to decide on their own. So he really was worried that the Supreme Court was kind of misinterpreting that vision. I'm sorry, I know I've gone long on this answer. But as far as his personal life, he was often asked kind of how his religious life played into his role as a judge.

And he would say that there's no Catholic way to be a judge. He joked that just as there's no Catholic way to be a short order cook and to make a hamburger except to do it perfectly, there's no way to no Catholic way of interpreting the Constitution or interpreting historical context except to do it perfectly. And in his introduction, Justice Thomas says that to dad, that meant in part he had to be, he stuck to the oath that he made when he was appointed to the Supreme Court, which meant a limited vision of his role as an Article III judge. He could not impose his personal religious or religious views or policy preferences on his opinions. His detractors and even some of his supporters assumed that, for example, he ruled as he

did in abortion cases because he was Catholic and the churches against abortion, but he would explain to his supporters, if that's why you think I voted as I did, then I'm sorry, but that's just not why. And if the court were actually, if the Constitution cleared a right to abortion, he would have ruled differently, but it clearly doesn't. So that's why he ruled as it did, not for any theological reason. So knowing your father's faith and his conviction to our constitutionally protected freedoms, is there a particular opinion of his that you think is especially appropriate for Americans to revisit today, given all the attacks we're seeing on faith and religious liberty? My co-editor, Ed Waylon, really likes Leav v. Weissman. So this is Leave v. Weissman, and this is one

I was referring to earlier. We titled in this collection, The Right to Public Prayer. And this is a 1992 case and the court ruled five to four that non-sectarian benedictions and invocations at high school and public school events were violations of the establishment clause because it created kind of a peer pressure and governmental pressure on students to participate and my father pointed out that how that's simply not the case and there's a great line from that from that opinion it plays a line that a lower cut court judge made that, you know, too often the Supreme Court, you know, when addressing religious issues had to determine whether a creche was too far away from a menorah, you know, or something like that on a public property around Christmas time and Hanukkah.

And so as somebody, a lower court judge had said that's closer to interior design than the judiciary, and my father says, but interior decorating is a rock hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs. And his point there is that, you know, it's not their job as judges

to determine whether, you know, students are experiencing some peer pressure and Freudian misgivings or something like that. You go to the Constitution and to the original public meaning of what was ratified and that makes clear that this would have been constitutional, what was going on there.

And he came to similar conclusions about displays of the Ten Commandments at courthouses and things like that. On the other hand, there's a case, we included a case that is controversial among defenders of religious liberty. We included that in this collection. It's Employment Division v. Smith. And my father wrote the majority ruling that it was okay, it was constitutional for the state of Oregon to fire employees because they had smoked peyote. These were Native American employees of the state of Oregon and they had smoked peyote as part of a ritual. And my dad ruled that they, it was a, it was a neutral law. It was not seeking to repress a single religion.

It wasn't a targeted thing. It applied to everybody. And so it was constitutional for the state to fire those employees. That didn't mean he thought it was a good law. It meant that it wasn't up to the justices to decide that it should. shouldn't be a law. And he said it's up to the people to decide how to handle that. And that led to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is, as you guys know, a big source of conflict right now. So that, a lot of, as I said, a lot of people who are religious liberty defenders

don't like that opinion by my father. I think if they read it, they would kind of recognize that there's actually, it holds up pretty well. I think the logic is sound. Though I certainly understand why it concerns people now. Well, last question for you. He, toward the end of his time on the court, there were some decisions, you know, that he wrote some really strong dissents to. Always love reading those. Yeah. They're just so, the writing is just so good.

But was he, I'm clearly, he was concerned about the direction of the court on some of these things. I mean, he and, like, in the same-sex marriage ruling, he and Justice Alito, they were expressing concerns that this was going to lead to some severe questions about the future of religious liberty in America. How do you think he would feel about his, you know, the direction of the court now, you know, with his successor, Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, I mean, do you think he would be encouraging? by that or do you think he would still have concerns about the overall direction of things? I think he would still have concerns, but if you were to tell him when he was first appointed in 1986 that there would be several originalists on the Supreme Court, several justices who interpreted the Constitution according to its original public meaning, I think he would have been pretty happy. Obviously, that doesn't mean that they're all going to agree or rule as he would

have, but it's certainly a strong, a big step in the right direction that would have pleased him, even if he would recognize that, you know, a lot of the same debates are being hashed out and nothing is certain. That the overall direction of the court, I think he would have been pretty pleased by. I mean, he worked hard in his many dissents to explain himself and what the proper role of the judiciary was and what it meant to, what the proper approach to interpreting the Constitution was. And I think he had a huge influence because he kept hammering that point home. And I think that influence is, is evidence on the bench right now. Well, the book is called On Faith, Lessons from an American Believer. Chris Scalia, I appreciate your time today. Thank you guys

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