From Politico, short reactions from an array of distinguished legal scholars and commentators, not all of them complimentary: How Antonin Scalia Changed America.
Notable is the common thread that Scalia is the maker of modern originalism (including from non-originalists). For example, from Kermit Roosevelt:
Scalia brought to the Supreme Court two interpretive theories that will remain long after his departure: originalist interpretation of the Constitution and textualist interpretation of statutes. Both these methodologies have achieved great success and widespread approval; they will be prominent features of our jurisprudential landscape for the foreseeable future. In that respect, Scalia was an enormously influential and successful justice.
And from Gillian Metzger:
Scalia was a colossal figure in American public law. He brought originalism into the constitutional mainstream, an achievement signaled as much by Justice John Paul Stevens’ heavily originalist dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Second Amendment case, as by Scalia’s own majority opinion. He was even more responsible for the textualist turn in statutory interpretation, as well as for the reinvigoration of the theory of unitary executive.
Geoffrey Stone argues:
Central to Scalia’s mission was to persuade the court to embrace his approach to constitutional interpretation. It is fair to say that, with but a few exceptions, he did not succeed in this mission. Especially in light of the fact that 12 of the last 16 justices were appointed by Republican presidents, this failure was a bitter disappointment for Scalia.
Scalia had many great victories in his 30 years as a justice, but the bold effort to reinvent constitutional interpretation was not one of them.
I would say that Scalia's victory was to make originalism one of the contenders in constitutional adjudication. In that sense, even though the Court never embraced his views across the board, he did "reinvent constitutional interpretation."
The last word goes to Noah Feldman, with whom I don't often agree (but I do here): "We shall not see his like again."
Posted at 6:42 PM