I’ve just had a chance to read Joan Biskupic’s biography of Justice Scalia, American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
I highly recommend it. It is engagingly written, and paints a fascinating picture of the Supreme Court’s most interesting Justice. It is part history, part psychoanalysis, and it was a hard book to put down–both because of my fascination with the subject of the book, and because of Joan’s no nonsense, clean writing style.
There’s not much new on election law in the book. The book does cover Justice Scalia’s “Get over it” response to Bush v. Gore, and it does so in a wider context.
One election law fact that I have not seen reported anywhere before is about a draft Justice Scalia opinion in Chisom v. Roemer. On page 168, Joan reports of the drafting process: “Scalia began drafting a dissenting opinion that not only would have restricting the Voting Rights Act coverage to legislators but would have dramatically curtailed its protections against any kind of redistricting that diluted African American voting strength.”
I have not seen that draft opinion, which did not make it into Justice Scalia’s published dissent in the case. And it is not clear to me how different it is from Justice Thomas’s Holder v. Hall concurrence, which Justice Scalia joined. But I would love to take a look at that opinion next time I’m near the library of Congress and can take a look at Justice Blackmun’s or Justice Marshall’s case files.