Justice Sports A Beard For First Time In 55 Years

The beard that Justice Antonin Scalia was sporting at Monday’s opening of the new Supreme Court term made history.

Not since Charles Evans Hughes left the high court in 1941 has a justice worn a beard.

Scalia’s beard, spotted during the summer recess, was the subject of speculation in the closed little world of Supreme Court clerks, secretaries and other functionaries. Would he shave it off?

“It’s the hottest question in the building,” Maryellen Toughill, Scalia’s longtime secretary, said when pressed last week for her prediction. “I don’t have a clue.”

On Monday, promptly at 10 a.m., the marshal of the court, Dale Bosley, chanted “oyez, oyez, oyez …” and the nine justices stepped from behind the backdrop curtain to open the October 1996 term.

Scalia was in full beard.