The Eric Metaxas Show - James Rosen

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

James Rosen, Chief White House Correspondent for Newsmax, joins Eric to discuss volume one of an important biography, "Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936-1986."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. They say it's a thin line between love and hate, but we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least to make it a double or triple line. Now here's your line jumping host, Eric Mattaxas.

Happy Friday, Alvin. Yeah, Friday. Friday. I'm going to pick up my paycheck head to the bar. Yeah, there you get it. Old lady don't know nothing about it. You're getting your pickup. Yeah.

No, but it is Friday. It is. And you know what? On Friday, I like to get a little wacky, but we can't. No. Because we've got some very serious guests coming up. Oh, yes. In just a moment.

Oh, yes. Actually, this is great. It's serious but fantastic. In hour one today, I'm talking to James Rhodes. and kind of a big deal, Chief White House correspondent for Newsmax. He's written another book. It's about Antonin Scalia. Have you heard of Antonin Scalia?

He was, I'm pretty sure he worked in the reptile house at the Bronx Zoo. I'm confusing him with the Supreme Court Justice. I apologize. Those two. Same name, but different profession. We're talking about Justice Scalia in hour one. In hour two, another just amazing. amazing interview. Thomas Baker wrote a book called The Fall of the FBI.

Yes. With everything that's going on in our country right now, this is an important book. Yeah. So that's an hour two. So we've got really great substance, not like the fluff that we normally deliver up. Right. Yeah. And on Monday, we are talking to a real-life exorcist. I tell you, you don't want to miss that stuff. I mean, you really don't want to miss it. Okay. Now, before we get to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, stuff. I want you to give me your solemn promise, ladies and gentlemen. You know we're doing a campaign with food for the poor. I never hold you to this, but I will ask you, everybody listens

to this program if you would give something. I don't care if it's $5, $10. It doesn't matter that just everybody would give something. And if you give, your name goes into a hat and we pick three grand prize winners and you get all these signed books and stuff. Now, some of you, of you, of course, can give a lot. But I do want to tell you that we need your help. So we're asking you to go to metaxistalk.com. Metaxistalkis talk.com. You'll see the banner there. You feel good when you do something like this. There are families that can't feed their kids. Food for the poor comes in there, helps them out with showing the love of God to people who are suffering on a level that most of us cannot comprehend. So there's a phone number, 844-8-6-3-hope, 8-4-8-6-6-3 hope. Or try this number,

8-4-8-663 hope. Yes. And if that one doesn't work, 8-4-863-H-O-P-E, or you can just go to Metaxistock.com. Now, I want to say it again, if you could give $144 that feeds $4,000,000, or you can just go to Metaxistock.com. Now, I want to say it again, if you could give $144 that feeds four children, two nutritious meals every single day for one year, do you understand how much you could help some of these folks? And again, you're giving it the food for the poor. And I always say this, except I've been forgetting to say it lately. Anybody who can give $10,000, I always want to thank you in person, have didn't. with you, spend the evening whether you get to know you. Now, most people can't do anything near that. But do what you can, folks, because this is not a small thing. This is real hunger.

These are real people. And we have the opportunity through Food for the Poor, who is tremendously reputable to help these people. But if you can give, anybody can give 10,000 or more. I'd love to join you for dinner someplace around the country, whether here in New York or in your neck of the woods. We always work that out. But it would just be my joy. I can entice somebody to give that way. So again, the website is metaxis talk.com, Mataxistalk.com. And we are hoping everyone will do it. If you prefer to do it via phone, you can text the word Eric on your phone, Eric, to the number 91999.

Text the word Eric to 91199. Now, Albin, this week. my book, Fish Out of Water, came out of paperback. Yes, it did. Now, ladies and gentlemen, got it right here. It is a load of fun. Most of my books are not a load of fun.

No. There may be some fun in them. There's even jokes in the Bonhofer book. I refer to Jimmy Carter in the Bonhofer book, especially if you're smart and you read the index. There's jokes in all my books like Easter eggs. But this book is loaded with Calfour. Gamity.

Gammity. And it is a true story, and it's out in paperback. Yeah. And darling pictures, black and white and some color ones of you when you were a little baby. And your dad, of course, this is what I like about it. This book really is, in a sense, about your dad. The funniest stuff is really your dad. Your dad, in a sense, was very much like my dad.

He would kind of get words and phrases wrong. Right. And we'd say them, we'd laugh as kids. He wouldn't realize, oh, I said that word. wrong where I misused that phrase. And your dad, there's a couple of them there. I thought, well, maybe you could just mention a couple real quick because we've got some time. Well, the ones that I, when I, I always say to people who invite me to speak on my book letter to the American Church, I say, please invite me back to speak at this church because that's a really sobering

message. It's important, but it's very sober. But if I give my testimony the story of my life from fish out of water or talk about my book as atheism. It's like, there's a lot of fun. And it's fun. It's nice to have fun. The other day when I was in Toledo, Ohio, with Pastor Stephen Whitlow at Redemption Church there, it was like late at night, and I thought, you know what, I just need to grab something to eat. And so we went, or maybe this was with Pastor West Martin in, I'm sorry, it was with Pastor West Martin. I don't even remember now. This is the problem. I've been traveling too much. But there was a Burger King. I was like, you know what, let's just like go to Burger. I just want to just like just a little bite like something i'll i'll indulge myself on the road once in a blue moon right

and i realized you know the story from this book about when my father took my brother and me to mcdonalds now my father never ever went with us to fast food once in a blue moon my mother might but the point is that we were working class european immigrant family you don't eat out yeah like you eat at home yeah you don't waste your food out there that bad food so anyway my father goes and And he goes up to the, this is all obviously in the book, but he goes up to the counter there. And he says, eh, he says, hey, give me one, whopper. And like my brother and I, we were like 11 and 10. We just like writhed in misery because it's pronounced whopper dad, not whooper.

And guess what? This is a McDonald's. They don't have whoppers or whoopers. That's across the street at Burger King. But when my father said, give me one, I wuper, like, you can't make this stuff up. That's just one story. There's like a whole bunch stories.

I won't tell them now. But there's a lot of fun in there. And I thought someday I wanted to write a book about the story of my life. Really, it's the story of how I came to faith. You know, there's a lot of fun in there, but how eventually I got lost and started to twist in the wind. And it was not good. And Jesus found me. And that's the punchline of the book.

But it's the kind of book you can give to somebody who they're not going to read a religious book. They're not going to read a Christian book. They just want to read a fun book. And by the way, you got a pair of socks that seemed to come along with the paperback. Only you, as the author, got the pair of socks. Okay, this, I don't know if people can see the book, but the cover of the book is, it's fish out of water, and it shows a goldfish leaping out of a goldfish tank, which I'd never seen the image until this designer sent this to me. And I was like, that's the image.

It's very happy. But you, Albin, the other day... My wife found these actually. Found socks... Yeah. ...with the same image on them. Charles Tierit, by the way. Right.

But I still, frankly, can't even believe... Yeah. It's perfect. It looks like the two of them got together and just... It's mind bending that these socks go with the book. I almost want to say, like, I want to offer a pair of these socks with every book, but I can't do that because I got to make a deal with Charles Turwit. But it is just...

so crazy that you find these, the socks to go along with the cover of my book, Fish Out of Water. Anyway, look, I just, it's a lot of fun. And I think. And it's in paperback. It's in paperback. It's in paperback. Amazon.com. But I think, but I think fun is important.

We're always talking about serious stuff. Fun facts Friday, so here we are. But if you want to talk about the nature of reality and truth, joy is a big part of God's truth. And so there's sorrow, but there's joy. And so for sure, the most fun book I've ever written is Fish Out of Water, a Search for the Meaning of Life. So it's out in paperback. Suddenly, go boom, there it is. All right, now we're going to get very serious. We're going to remind you, metaxis talk.com. You've got to give metaxis talk.com. We'll be right back. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis,

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It's always been valuable since the dawn of time. Legacy precious metals is the company I trust for investing in gold. They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metals safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Hey there, folks. Today we are partnering with food for the poor to provide urgently needed food to some of the most impoverished countries in our hemisphere. because of interrupted planting cycles, rising food prices, and the lingering impact of COVID, the list of families unable to feed their children grows longer by the day.

But you can make a difference in these families today. A meal-for-meal match means that your one-time gift of $144. That's the meal-for-meal match. Your one-time gift of $144 provides a family of four with food for a year. That's two meals a day for the next year for a family. who struggle to get even a handful of rice or enough corn for tortilla, knowing your gift will never have more impact than right now. Would you rescue one family, three families, or even 10 families by going to Metaxistalk.com and click on the red Send Food Banner. You can also

text the keyword Eric to 911-99. You'll get a link to make your life-saving gift. Text Eric to 911-99- or to give your gift by phone. Call the toll-free. number 844-863, Hope, 844-863 Hope. 844-863 Hope. God bless you. Folks, welcome to the show. As you know, I'm very excited to interview James Rosen about his brand new biography, a significant achievement.

The book is about, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, Antonin Scalia. Have you heard that name? Scalia, Rise to Greatness. This is just a big deal. as somebody who could hardly think more highly of someone than I do of Justice Scalia, I am thrilled to discuss him with James Rosen, who is, as I said, the author of this book. Also, you will know James Rosen. Right now, he is the Chief White House correspondent for Newsmax, and he comes to us from

Washington, D.C. James Rosen, welcome and congratulations on this book. Thank you, Eric. It's an honor to be with you. I've long admired your own works of biography and can't wait for you to dig into this subject. It's a funny thing because I never thought I'd write a biography. It never even occurred to me. But now I seem to be known principally for the three biographies that I have written. I rarely have authors on this program who themselves have written biographies. I know what's involved in that.

And I know it's what's involved particularly when it is, you know, when it means to be definitive. When you're writing about a larger than life figure, you want to get everything. everything in that needs to be said. So I just have to ask you, you know, okay, you are Chief White House correspondent for Newsmax. You're a busy guy. What led you to say, I want to write a big biography of this incredibly important figure in the 20th century? Well, it's great to be with you again, Eric. This book, Scalia, Rise to Greatness, 1936 to 1986, tells the story of the first 50 years of Antonin Scalia's life.

leading up to and concluding with his ascension to the Supreme Court. Volume 2, which I hope will only be two years from now, will chronicle the 29 and a half years that Scalia spent as a Supreme Court justice. But Scalia's life up to becoming a Supreme Court justice was profound in its own right. And you ask why I decided to tell this story and tell it so comprehensively two volumes. First of all, the two existing books about Skulli, Scalia's life, were both written by liberals who, even though Scalia cooperated with one of them, both came out fairly contemptuous of the justice's philosophy, his jurisprudence, and his conduct

on the bench. So this is the first admiring biography of Antonin and Scalia. And as such, I consider the first accurate biography of Antenius. I was going to say, if you don't mind my saying, that is often the case. I was watching, I don't know, somehow by mistake, I found myself watching something on PBS the other day, and it was a total hit job on Antonin Scalia. I guess it was really talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg or actually, no, sorry, it was talking about Reagan's appointment to the Supreme Court whose name escapes me, the woman, how absurd that I can think of the name. Andrew Dale O'Connor, yeah. Okay. And the things that they said about Scalia, I thought this is scandalous. This was a great, great man, even if you disagreed.

with him to try to paint him the way they were painting him. So I just want to say one of the reasons it's a joy to interview about this book, which I'm glad to hear, of course, is the first volume. It does him justice. This is a great man whose life deserves to be done justice. And of course, he accomplished so much in his life that it's a two-volume project. This is the first volume. But the idea of undertaking this, a work of biography. It is a big deal for a very busy journalist as you've been. What made you decide that you wanted to just leap in? Because this is monumental. Obviously, this is the first of two volumes. So one of the first things I did when I first came to Washington as a correspondent for the Fox News Channel where I spent 19 years way back in 1999 was to write a

letter to Justice Scalia and ask for an interview. And he responded on Supreme Court's stationary. At that time, Fox News was not well known. We were often confused by those in the credentialing business for various public events with Fox 5, the local affiliate. And we were not yet as well known or on our way to ratings dominance at that particular time. And Scalia wrote back to me on Supreme Court stationary, and he said, I am a fan of the Fox News channel. That was bracing to hearing in late 1999. And he said, I have no doubt, as I had promised, that you would conduct a dignified interview. He said, unfortunately, I have a policy as a judge not to make a spectacle of myself by doing television interviews. And I wrote back politely to say, then what but

a spectacle could it be when a sitting Supreme Court justice sits before a bank of PBS cameras, which is where I first got to know him when I was a high school student watching him on television in the old Fred Friendly Debate Program, the Constitution, that delicate balance? What other than a spectacle could it be when a Supreme Court justice sits before a bank of PBS cameras and debates hypothetical scenarios with other eminent minds like Dan Rather and Gerald Ford and Sandra Day O'Connor. And he wrote back to me again on Stationary to say, in essence, a rare concession to win from Antonin Scalia, from Justice Scalia, you're right, he said, I probably shouldn't have done the Constitution, that delicate balance, which I did in exceeding to the importunings

of an old friend in Fred Friendly, who had been previously the president of CBS News. We agreed to meet for off-the-record lunches. We had two of them, and the contents of the lunches will remain off the record. But, you know, we had this extraordinary correspondence back and forth. It got even more amusing after that. And there I was, at 30, having lunch one-on-one with Justice Scalia at his most favorite restaurant, the A.V. Risturante Italiano, now long departed from New York Avenue. And we had wine together, and he even made me eat off of his plate.

I said, Mr. Justice, I came. He said, come on, come on, come on. So there I was shoveling vegetables off of Justice Scalia's play. He drove me back to my office in his car. And all of the clerks who I've interviewed and others who were passengers in Scalia's car described it as a frightening experience. And I had a little insight into that as well. So from those early and very generous experiences with him,

I resolved that someday I would write about him. And finally, I am telling the definitive story of Antonin Scalia in two volumes. this first one out today called Scully, a Rise to Greatness. It ends with him taking his seat on the Supreme Court. But it gives a lot of insight into his upbringing, his Catholic faith, the roots of his originalism and textualism, and lots of fun Nino stories from his days as a professor, his days in the Nixon administration, the Ford administration,

all of which was very consequential work. In the Nixon administration, he was the first general counsel to a new agency that President Nixon created called the White House Office of Telecommunications, communications policy. Scalia, we publish in this book for the first time his writings when he was general counsel to that agency. And as early as 1971, he predicted the Internet. He predicted the privacy concerns that would attend the development of the Internet.

He and his colleagues in that agency were throwing around terms that wouldn't escape the lips of so-called ordinary Americans for another 25 years with shared network systems and so forth. And then in the Ford administration, Scalia served in the same job that William Rehnquist had held when he was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1971, the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. It's such a unwieldy title, but it's summed up as the President's Lawyer's Lawyer.

It's the official in the Department of Justice who provides binding legal opinions to say that what an administration wants to do is either legal or not legal. And in that role, Scalia, this was the post-Watergate era. There were a lot of greedy and reckless ideas flying around at that time, Eric, from Capitol Hill in the news media.

sought to limit the powers of the presidency after Watergate. And Scalia and a number of other what I call conscientious conservative lawyers at the time, they had no real affinity for the lost cause of Richard Nixon, but they recognized that after Watergate and its subsidiary scandals faded from view, the country would still need a strong executive. And Scalia helped preserve the powers of the executive in that time when Congress and the media were trying to limit it. And in that same position in the Ford era, he also had a lot of, a lot to do with the reformation of the intelligence community, to start to put down rules of the road for the intelligence communities. And even to even to weigh in on specific covert actions that were run by Antonin Scalia for his review. I'll give you just one example, which is that on the afternoon of April 30, 1975, Scalia got a call from the White House, the Ford White House, saying, can you please give us an opinion within three hours as to whether under the War Powers Act, it would be lawful.

for us to evacuate our personnel from the Saigon embassy with helicopters. And Scalia gave his approval for that operation, but he later disclosed, and this account is published in Scalia Rise to Greatness for the first time, what if I didn't provide my approval for that operation? Would we not rescue our people from the South Vietnamese Embassy there in Saigon? That's just one cameo. Scali have worked on a lot of covert matters, and most of it remains classified, but we have a lot of his previously unpublished writings from all phases of his career.

the book takes you through when he became a judge on the Court of Appeals alongside Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Robert Bork and Larry Silberman and Ken Starr, a real murderer's row of legal talent, and then finally concludes with him winning confirmation, 98 to nothing, to be a Supreme Court justice. That's volume one. And again, it's just bursting with new documents, new interviews, and new information about this, really someone who was one of the most important Americans of the last hundred years. Well, it's an important book. We don't say that about many books. They might be wonderful. But it's important because he is such a seminal figure in the 20th century where he stood with regard to the law. And the 21st century. He really spanned.

I was going to say. And then the 21st century. All right. We'll be right back talking to James Rosen, Chief White House correspondent for news. Max and author of Scalia, Rise to Greatness, 1936 to 1986. We'll be right back. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question. Well, the owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right, designed to heal. And I

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On one of them, go to Relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief to find out about this offer. Feel the difference. Get ready for a riveting new documentary called Come Out in Jesus' Name in theaters nationwide March 13th. It follows number one bestselling author and Pastor Greg Locke's epic journey from a small church in Tennessee to a global deliverance ministry. Following a startling chain of events, Pastor Locke took a 180-degree turn from his mainstream religious traditions and led his church to the brink of revival. He's exposing and fighting an unseen enemy that's destroying families and churches and paralyzing Christians with fear and bondage. Knowledge is power. Learn how Pastor Locke and a team show the church how to defeat the enemy, get delivered,

and set free. The most important awakening in church history has begun. Don't miss Come Out in Jesus Name in theaters nationwide. March 13th. Tickets are available now at Come Out in Jesus' Name dot com. That's come out in Jesus name.com. I've seen it. I recommend it highly. Come out in Jesus name. com. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to James Rosen, author of Scalia, rise to greatness, 1936 to 1986. You talk in the book James about his early life, obviously, born in 1936. He seems to have been, just per your description of your lunches with him. He was just a fun person, brilliant, fun, sometimes irascible. The only time I ever had the grand privilege of meeting him was at something, I don't know,

16 or 17 years ago. And a friend of mine said, Eric, you should get a photo with Scalia. And I was kind of shy. I thought, oh, my goodness, this is like, you know, meeting Abraham Lincoln. I don't want to bother him. So we bothered him for a photo. My friend takes my digital camera. one of these digital cameras, snaps a photo of me and Scalia.

I'm thinking, wow. So I take the camera, I look to see the photo. My friend had inadvertently hit the Zoom. What I had and have to this day is a photo of Scalia's chin. That's it. The rest of him, me, not in the photo. But what makes it really funny for me is about an hour later we saw him again. and my friend says, oh, Justice Scalia, this is Scalia.

You know, the photo didn't come out. Would you mind whatever? And Scalia says famously, infamously, nope, that's it. And he just kept going. And I thought, why do I find that funny? I mean, I loved him so much that even his refusal to stop again was somehow delightful to me. So there's something delightful about him. There's a traditionalism at work in that rejection of the do-over.

but generally I wouldn't say that would have been his uniform practice it sounds to me as though he had someplace he had to be perhaps but I just found it funny and charming even in the moment like I just thought that he managed to pull it off in a way but he had there there's a wit that's there and a joy that's there and you you you mentioned that earlier in your meetings with him the idea that he would you know get you to eat food off of his plate so I want to talk about his early years because you do cover that in the book, and most people wouldn't be inclined to know about that. Very serious about his Catholic faith, obviously Italian. Talk a little bit about that part of his life. So this book, Scalia, rise to greatness, really is the most in-depth treatment of Scalia's life. It benefits from a wealth of documentary and personal sources that were either overlooked by or unavailable to his previous biographers. One such source is a secret oral history of his life that Justice Scalia conducted in Supreme Court Chambers with an interviewer in 1992, and which is now being published for the first time in these pages.

And so Scalia was born in New Jersey. He moved when he was five to Queens. He loved Queens. He grew up in a multi-ethnic neighborhood playing stickball. What part of Queens since I grew up in Queens, I have to ask? Elmhurst, Queens. Okay. My people are from Elmhurst.

This is kind of amazing to me thinking of him growing up in Elmish, Queens. I feel the synchronicity coursing through me right now. It's actually, that's so, I don't know, I'm touched by that. Wow. So, and he was, as you say, a devout Catholic. His father was an Italian immigrant who came to the United States, not knowing English with only $400 in his pocket in 1920. His mother was the daughter of Italian immigrants. They both wound up becoming teachers, his mother in elementary school teacher,

and Scalia's father, a professor of romance languages at Brooklyn College for 30 years. Now, between the liturgy of the Catholic Church itself and the reverence for text that he inherited from his parents, and specifically his father, a Romance Languages Professor, who was leery of translation from one language to another and its ability perhaps to warp the original meaning of text, Scalia grew up with, from all of these influences, a profound reverence for the inviolability of sacred texts. He went to Jesuit institutions for high school and college, Xavier High School in New York City, which was a rare hybrid of a military academy run by Jesuits. And then he went to Georgetown University.

In both places, he was top of his class. Magna Cum Laudey at Harvard Law School, top five of his class there. He had an incredible prodigious capacity for hard work. But it was fueled by Catholic faith. And this is the first book to really treat Scalia's faith in debt. from a biographical point of view. And it's one of the things that I think makes Scalia rise to greatness valuable to 21st century readers. Well, it's extraordinary.

Let's talk a little bit about his originalism, whatever we call it these days. That is something that, of course, at the time in 1986 when he becomes the Supreme Court justice, it was not, we were not where we are today. We had had the previous court for a few decades had been moving dramatically away from that. So we would take a particularly gutsy, brilliant person to say, no, this is the way to read it. How did he get there? Both as a professor and as an official in the government in the executive branch in the Nixon and Ford Eras. Scalia became world-wise, worldly, let's say, about the way Washington,

works. And he came to understand that sometimes lawmakers, particularly Democratic lawmakers, like, let's say, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts at the time, they would recognize that there were certain provisions they wanted to be enacted into law, but which would never survive an actual floor vote by the legislature. So they would sprinkle indications of their intent for the law into floor debates, committee reports that would be produced as a law snaked its way through Congress, and they wouldn't put those, that language in the actual law itself, but they were confident that when the law was enacted, liberal judges strolling through the garden of what is called legislative history would find these little seedlings and expand the meaning of the law

beyond what was the text of what was passed and to sort of graph their own policy preferences onto laws. Scalia stood afford all of that. He thought nobody voted on a committee report or a House floor debate. And what they voted on was the text of the law. And so Scalia really launched a revolution, both as a judge on the Court of Appeals. We're going to go to a break, but I want to pick up this and other sentences talking to James Rosen. The book is Scalia.

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his, he really brought a revolution. You know, it's, we forget because he hears so much talk these days about originalism. And yet he really was the one, in a sense, to dramatically break ranks with the past. I mean, I remember, I don't know if it was in First Things magazine in the early 90s or something, but people talking about legislating from the bench, recognizing that this had been going on and it had to stop. And he was maybe the major force in making it stop because it's scandalous.

It's wrong. But that case had to be made. And he made that case. So in this book, Scalia Rise to Greatness, we chart the formation of his theory, originalism, on behalf of which he really, as you say, launched a revolution in this country. And this gets to the heart of Scalia's legacy and why he's so important. Until Scalia came along on the federal bench, on the appellate bench, both as a judge on the Court of Appeals and then as a justice on the Supreme Court, a liberal notion of how judges should do their job prevailed. It was called the living constitution.

And liberal judges held that the constitution and statutes in general are living, breathing organisms that should expand as necessary to take account of changed circumstances, modern phenomena that the founders never could have been. visions, such as nuclear weapons or the internet or what have you, and that we should expand the meaning of the Bill of Rights as needed or particular statutes in order to accommodate these changed circumstances. Scalia stood a thwart all that. He said, what a judge should do, what is the central business of a judge? It is interpreting what the Constitution and statutes mean, right? They have two parties before them arguing over the law, whether it's the government and a corporation,

two individuals, what have you, and it's the job of the judge to say, well, what? the law actually means. Scalia's idea was that nobody ever voted on a committee report or a House floor debate. He didn't care about legislative intent. You know what the legislative intent was? The law that they passed. Scalia championed originalism, specifically original meaning, that the judge should always discern the original meaning of a law or the constitutional provision. And what was that? That's what it was widely understood to mean when it was enacted. We shouldn't be grafting our latter-day preferences or expanded definitions onto what the legislature and the president actually enacted at the time. And now, how do we find the original meaning? Again, Scalia said,

you don't have to look to legislative history. Just look to the text, the textual, the text of the law itself. And so as I put it in Scalia rise to greatness, Scalia championed originalism, and textualism was the metal detector, so to speak, that one would use to find original meaning. By the time he died, no less a figure than Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, one of the liberals on the court, with whom Scalia also had a great relationship, had pronounced that thanks to Scalia's revolution, the force of his intellect and the liveliness of his writing, even when he was writing in dissent, quote, we are all originalists now. And so today, when judges are interpreting the law or the Constitution,

when lawyers are arguing in front of judges, even when lawmakers are writing new laws, they're very quick now to get to the text of the law, and they don't bother so much with legislative history. And this is so profound an impact on the way American society and law work, because of the way the Supreme Court affects just about every area of American life, this makes Scalia one of the most important Americans of the last hundred years. Well, it's an extraordinary thing. It reminds me to some extent of the subject of my own biography, Martin Luther, who said, wait a second. If there's ever any daylight between the interpretation and the text, we need to go with the text. Let's be careful because interpretation can carry us far away from the text. And once you feel permission to drift away from the text, you can drift very, very far indeed.

So it's extraordinary in a way that you have him calling people to account, again, with the force of his intellect, being able to pull that off. Because it does, there's a contempt, I guess, for the common man, the people that vote. You say, well, what do they know? We're going to interpret it as we like. And, you know, we still see that going on. But it's fascinating to me that you have figures like this, standing a thwart history. Obviously, you and I both using the preposition, which shows that we're Buckley Conservatives or might be. It's kind of funny to me that it takes someone like this to do this, that God raises up somebody.

I would say that God raises up a figure of such intellect and personal power that he's able to pull this off so that you get somebody like a Kagan saying that. I'm actually shocked that she said that. Again, we can't exclude from our considerations of how Scalia managed this, the centrality of his Catholic faith. And one other central factor, that is the presence in his life of Maureen McCarthy Scalia, to whom he was married for 50 some odd years. and who raised their nine children, and as Scalia was always willing to say, with very little assistance from him, he used to say that I take care of the Constitution and Maureen takes care of everything else. And even Gene Scalia, the Justice's oldest son, a prominent attorney in his own right and who served in the cabinet, in the Trump administration, he said to me, when I interviewed him for this project, I interviewed four of the Scalia's nine children, including Father Paul Scalia as well. He said, look, you're writing a book about my dad. I can point to a lot of important Supreme Court justices.

I don't know that I could point you to anybody else who ever pulled off with my mom pulled off and raising nine kids. Often while Scalia's career had taken off and required absences from home. And, you know, but in 1976, for example, we show in this book Scalia Rise to Greatness, when Scalia was an assistant attorney general, the Scalia children only eight of them at that point ranged in age from under a year to 20, or gosh,

nights to 11 or thereabouts, 15. And, you know, you have eight children ranging from 12 months to 15 years of age. And Scalia would be attending ABA conferences in England for several days, or Germany. And as I say, these were the hardest days for Maureen Scalia. But this is someone who deserves a biography in her own right, and she was a central factor in Scalia's rise to greatness. Well, it's just extraordinary. Again, I can't tell you how glad I am that you took the trouble to write this book and obviously working on volume two. It's necessary. You could make the case, and we'll talk about it in the next segment, that Scalia is a major part of saving America, as we know it, according to the founder's vision. This is about as big a part of that as it gets.

We'll be right back talking to James Rosen. Folks, welcome back. We're talking about the great anti-examplea. Folks, welcome back. We're talking about the great Antonin Scalia, what seems to me, the definitive biography of him is here with me. At least this is the first of two proposed volumes. It's brand new. Scalia rise to greatness 1936 to 1986 to 1986, the year he became a justice on the court. James Rosen, he was known, Nino, as his friends called him, Antonin Scalia, was known to be friends with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who many of us would think of as antithetical to him in terms of legal philosophy.

Tell us a little bit about that, because it's sometimes hard to comprehend how someone as dedicated as Scalia was to his view of the Constitution and how to read it might be friends with, genuinely friends with somebody who didn't view things the same way. The Ginsburg-Skalia friendship has now been celebrated in stage plays in opera, and it kind of serves as an all-purpose meme out there today. You see career coaches telling you to go out and find the Ginsburg to your inner Scalia and so on. And so it stands as a kind of all-purpose metaphor for comedy amongst intellectual combatants. Comity. But this book, comedy. I want to know. I just want my audience, because we talk about comedy a lot.

Comity, C-O-M-I-T-Y, was what James Rosen just. said, and yes, that's a beautiful way to put it. I'll take $5 words for 100. But this book, Scalia Rise to Greatness, really charts as no other biography has done, the beginning and the flowering of the Scalia-Ginsberg friendship. Scalia joined the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is the appellate bench that is one rung below the U.S. Supreme Court. And when he got there, there was a judge on that court already for two years, appointed

by President Carter named Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and her files at the Library of Congress for her Supreme Court papers are not open, but her files from her term on the D.C. Circuit Court are, and there I found example after example of Scalia's early correspondence with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, where it takes the form of handwritten notes and letters and correspondence and draft opinions and memos flying back and forth, sometimes in their own hand. And these have never been published until now, and they really show the German and the flowering of the famous RBG-Nino relationship, where you can see Ginsburg at times needling, flattering, cajoling,

almost mothering Scalia at different points. Scalia, for his part, returning with superlative praise for her opinions, at times letting his hair down, admitting that he was in error, apologizing at one point for a late opinion by saying sloth that I am. These are really intimate exchanges between the two of them, unlike any exchanges between any other judges on the, that court at that time. And it really shows, again, the flowering of this celebrated relationship, which means so much to modern society, the idea that you can have a Ginsburg and a Scalia be best

friends. It's very important still today. Well, it's vitally important to the future of this country that we can have friendships like this. This has become very, very difficult in the last few years. Just a minute left. I think we need to have you back just to talk. talk more. There is so much here. I'd be honored. I'd love to talk to you about your book on Watergate. So much to talk about. But what we have here for the first time is something that has been needed, that hasn't existed. And James, knowing a little bit about what it takes to write something like this, I just want to say congratulations. Thank you for the effort. Because, again, I can't think of anyone really more seminal than Scalia. He is seminal. He's unique in helping pull us back from the brink

of legislation from the bench in the end of America as represented by the founders in the Constitution. So let me just end by saying thank you. Congratulations. Ladies and gentlemen, the book is Scalia, rise to greatness, 1936 to 1986. And again, James, thank you. Thank you.