Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I wish to talk about Judge Scalia for a few minutes, and then I will address the vacancy on the Court. There is no question that the Supreme Court has lost a strong and thoughtful voice. No matter what issues the Justices on the Court might have disagreed with, or even when there was a disagreement on how to interpret the Constitution, there is no question that Judge Scalia had a unique capacity to get beyond that. He will be missed by the Court for both his intellect and his friendship. He was an Associate Justice on the Court for almost 30 years. He was a true constitutional scholar, both in his work before the Court and on the Court, and he brought a lifetime of understanding of the law to the Court. He began his legal career in 1961, practicing in private practice. In 1967, he became part of the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law. In 1972, he joined the Nixon administration as General Counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy, and from there he was appointed Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. He brought a great deal of knowledge to his work and finished the first part of his career as a law professor at the University of Chicago, and that is the point where he became a judge. In 1982, President Reagan appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, a court that gets many of the cases that wind up on the Supreme Court. He was on that court for a little more than 4 years.…”