Bruce Allen Murphy’s new biography of the most important jurist of our time, Scalia: A Court of One, has already passed through a characteristically rigorous critique at the “Bench Memos” blog at National Review Online by the redoubtable Ed Whelan. After identifying one error after another, Whelan provided a prepublication warning: “Do not waste your time or money on this book.” Well, the book is out now, and notwithstanding some inexplicably favorable reviews, it is impossible to disagree with Whelan’s verdict.
To be sure, Murphy, a professor at Lafayette College and author of earlier biographies of Justices William O. Douglas and Abe Fortas, does a fairly solid job in working through Scalia’s youth in Trenton and later Queens, his education (at the Jesuit Xavier High School in New York, Georgetown, and Harvard Law School), and rise in the world of law (private practice, academia, the executive branch, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, and then the Supreme Court). Scalia’s professional success in post-World War II America is a credit to his excellent Jesuit education, great intelligence, and industry.
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