Riding with Scalia: Reporter fondly recalls trip across Washington state with late Supreme Court Justice

For the last 22 years, when planning a trip to Washington D.C., I could call Justice Antonin Scalia’s office, ask his assistant for an appointment and – as often as not – get 45 minutes with the poet laureate of the U.S. conservative movement.

This drove some of my liberal friends crazy and mystified conservative friends, especially lawyers, who couldn’t figure out why the opportunity was wasted on a political agnostic, worse yet, a journalist.

I long ago gave up trying to figure it out. All I knew is I didn’t have to love or hate Scalia’s politics to learn a thing or three from him about writing, so I talked to him whenever I could.

When we met in 1994, he had been on the U.S. Supreme Court for 12 years. He had no idea if I agreed or disagreed with his politics. I had no powerful friends or family making the introduction. I was just a reporter from Idaho who provided the car and snacks for an all-day road trip from Spokane to Seattle.

Here’s how it came about: my friend Dave Newman was a broke law student, serving on the committee to organize the annual William O. Douglas Lecture at Gonzaga University. Newman had been my editor in the Idaho edition of The Spokesman-Review.

He was in charge of recruiting the Douglas Lecturer. Newman characteristically shot the moon, inviting people like the wizard defense attorney Gerry Spence and Scalia. Scalia accepted, leaving Newman a message with his desk phone number.

A good lawyer knows the law, but a great lawyer knows the judge and Newman had done his reporting, finding out Scalia was an enthusiastic photographer. So the next time they talked (Scalia answering his office phone) Newman suggested a 300-mile scenic drive across Washington to Seattle, the next stop on his tour. He described the Columbia River canyons, Grand Coulee Dam, Snoqualmie Pass through the Cascades and then the finale: Seattle and the far Olympic Mountain skyline.

Scalia took the bait. But, Newman was a married man with two kids, a 6-year-old Honda sedan and a 13-year-old Cheerios-infused Oldsmobile station wagon. Neither one would do. That’s when Newman called me with a generous offer: if I would rent a nice new sedan and pack a picnic of regional delicacies, I could tag along.

When the day came, Scalia was big news. Supreme Court justices had never spoken so frankly in public and rarely to students and other nobodies. Scalia outlined his notion of judicial restraint and defended nonsectarian graduation prayers, opining the court should respect community traditions more than legal abstractions.

Near the end, some smart alec asked the notorious textualist if even he would be tempted to amend the Constitution, given the chance. Scalia quipped that he would, adding four words at the very end: “And we mean it.”

A few minutes later, we walked out the back door of the lecture hall, hustled one-ninth of the U.S. Supreme Court into a rented Chrysler New Yorker and drove off into the basalt and grasslands of the Columbia Plateau. No FBI interview. No police escort. “Is this an amazing country, or what?” I remember thinking.

I had packed crackers and a tin of Cougar Gold cheese and pretty quickly started passing snacks forward from my post in the back seat.

Newman and I were a pair of journalists with a political rock star in tow. Still, the ground rules were plain: this was a social trip, not a work trip.

He put us at ease quickly, asking all about Newman’s career plans and urging him to focus on telecommunications law. He talked about his early days as a lawyer, when judges and clerks could slip out to a baseball game without shame.

All those kids (nine) seemed to have kept him grounded in a way I didn’t expect. He was funny, occasionally profane and seemed like he probably knew where the frozen peas were in his neighborhood supermarket.

Newman got him talking about a key press freedom case (Sullivan v. New York Times). A country kid, I was surprised this Queens native had a practical basis for his views on gun control. As a teenager, he had competed in riflery, carrying his target rifle to and from school in Queens.

Scalia had been on the staff of the Office of White House Counsel when President Nixon fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. We asked what it was like to be so close to a constitutional crisis. Scalia said the so-called “Saturday Night Massacre” wasn’t a crisis at all. The political process, he said, was more than equal to the task of penalizing the power grab.

Not what I expected. That was the first time I understood the long view his kind of conservatism required. Regrettable things would happen. Individuals might be ground to dust. But if change was needed, voters could throw out their lawmakers. If durable change was needed, the framers required it to be made deliberately through the marathon testing of a new law by two legislative bodies, an executive action and the possibility of judicial review. And if a near-permanent change was needed, the Constitution could be amended.

At the time of our road trip, his friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg still wasn’t widely known. He watched us for reactions as he told us he had spent the duration of Ginsburg’s confirmation process fretting that Nina Totenberg, NPR’s crackerjack Supreme Court reporter, would learn the Scalias and the Ginsburgs had celebrated New Year’s Eve together for years.

Whaaat? The politics of personal destruction were already a feature of Washington by 1994 and I had bought into the caricature of him as a true believer with no patience for the rest of the political spectrum.

He told us he hadn’t cared what conservatives would think, but said he had worried if Ginsburg supporters knew, they might not vote to confirm her, denying the court a great thinker.

That friendship across the aisle made me think the court was in good hands and made me care less about his politics.

We rolled down the west slope of the Cascades at dusk and delivered Scalia to the Four Seasons Hotel. I slipped into his raincoat a bottle of Lost Mountain red wine made in Sequim by my uncle and his sons. “Boys,” said Scalia, “If you’re in D.C. give me a call. I mean it.”

So I called, several times over the years.

When I was a volunteer for Idahoans for Openness in Government, I tested arguments on him and got great suggestions how to press for access to government documents and entrée to government meetings.

When I became a journalism professor, I tried out on him my most provocative interpretations of the First Amendment, gathering courage from his absolutist belief in free speech: “Free means free.”

I bought his book on legal writing and shared it with students as they began their law school careers. Agree or disagree, you could do worse than to emulate his legal writing, especially his pungent dissents.

I tried not to abuse his invitation and as often as not, he made time when I called ahead, even enduring my request to bring my whole family for a visit during which my son dove for quarters in the cracks of the sofa in his office. He was nice to the kids, asked my wife about her work at The Nature Conservancy.

Every time I left, walking through the Great Hall of the Supreme Court building and out onto the plaza where so many protests have been held, I couldn’t help having the same thought: “Is this a great country, or what?”

Dean Miller is senior vice president of content at Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network. He was a reporter for The Spokesman-Review from 1986 to 1995. Dave Newman is now in private practice in Seattle, where he specializes in gun rights cases.