Plot
Antonin Scalia is entering a new term of the Supreme Court and reviewing applications for law clerks to serve in his office during the coming year. One of the applications he receives is from Cat, a recent woman graduate from law school who wishes to be his law clerk and who also has firmly held liberal beliefs. Scalia is intrigued and invites her for an interview. The interview leads to heated exchanges in which the potential law clerk makes strong assertions about her liberal beliefs and claims that these convictions do not mean she is unqualified to be a clerk for a conservative Justice of the Court. When Scalia protests, Cat states that she thinks she and Scalia actually have a lot in common, such as being Roman Catholic and graduating from Harvard Law School. After some further verbal sparring, Scalia agrees to take her on as his law clerk and as someone capable of making reasoned arguments on positions which do not necessarily align completely with his own.
Soon after she becomes his clerk, legal blogs begin reporting personal details of Scalia's new law clerk and details of her personal life. She feels compelled to present these to Scalia prior to them being made public in the press and causing possible embarrassment to Scalia in that way. She admits to being part of the LGBT movement and that she is involved in an LGBT relationship. Rather than becoming angry, Scalia indicates that he is better-informed than she may have thought and that he had received a preliminary report of this matter through a background check during her application process. He says that her private life is not the media's business or his, and she continues as his legal clerk.
While clerking for Scalia she has further confrontations with both Scalia and his other highly conservative law clerk. At one point, Scalia requires her to join him at a shooting range, and he teaches her to shoot a rifle. Unexpectedly, the two are able to debate issues of the Court further in a manner suggesting that Scalia is more open-minded than often-stated opinions of him as an arch-conservative. Their mutual animosity and differences of opinion begin to shift considerably when Scalia appears to suffer from heart palpitations, and she quickly comes to his side to assist him as best she can. Later, when her own father appears to become mortally ill and on his death bed, Scalia offers his own sympathy for her imminent loss. The play ends with the two of them reconciling to the fact that both their differences and their similarities appear to signify more than the direct review of the cases coming before the Court in the particular year when she is one of his law clerks.
Reception
The play received a generally positive reception. [1] The New York Times gave the play's 2015 run a positive review and stated that "Gero's portrayal is a more reflective version of Justice Scalia than the one the public sees. It is also more sympathetic than many might expect." [7] According to Above the Law, the "strongest reason to see the play is Edward Gero’s remarkable performance". [1] A correspondent for The Atlantic complimented Gero's "eerily convincing physical impersonation" of Scalia and the script's "clever lines". [11] The Washington Post considered the play "alive with new writing", stating that Gero's performance "makes you believe this tantalizing man knows and feels American law down to his very bones", but argued that the script makes Scalia "he is more believable than" the clerk character, Cat, such that the Post recommended that Strand and Smith "temper the characterization a little" to make her more "believable". [12] According to the New York University Journal of Law & Liberty , The Originalist depicts Cat as counter-clerk as a "ceaseless sparring partner" who advocates living constitutionalism; in reality, however, Scalia's counter-clerks typically were not tasked with convincing him originalism was wrong but instead had the responsibility to "help assure that he was the best, truest, most straight-shooting originalist and textualist he could be", in the words of one of his former clerks. [13]
In a review of a 2018 run at Court Theatre, NewCity Stage criticized The Originalist's premise, arguing that it implicitly "attempts to vindicate Scalia’s impact on American law by arguing he was a pretty nice guy", but complimented the production as "expertly acted and beautifully produced". [14]
Antonin Gregory Scalia was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor.
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White, and at the time was viewed as a moderate consensus-builder. Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor. During her tenure, Ginsburg authored the majority opinions in cases such as United States v. Virginia (1996), Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000), and City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York (2005). Later in her tenure, Ginsburg received attention for passionate dissents that reflected liberal views of the law. She was popularly dubbed "the Notorious R.B.G.", a moniker she later embraced.
Originalism is a legal theory that bases constitutional, judicial, and statutory interpretation of text on the original understanding at the time of its adoption. Proponents of the theory object to judicial activism and other interpretations related to a living constitution framework. Instead, originalists argue for democratic modifications of laws through the legislature or through constitutional amendment.
Douglas Howard Ginsburg is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a senior U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is also a professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law School of George Mason University.
Constitution in Exile is a controversial term that refers to the situation resulting from provisions of the United States Constitution allegedly not having been enforced according to their "original intent" or "original meaning". Some originalists might argue, for example, that the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause do not authorize economic legislation dating back to the New Deal.
The Antonin Scalia Law School is the law school of George Mason University, Virginia's largest public research university. It is located in Arlington, Virginia, roughly 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Washington, D.C., and 15 miles (24 km) east-northeast of George Mason University's main campus in Fairfax, Virginia. The law school is accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). The school is known for its conservative ideological leaning in law and economics. It is named after former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996), was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the long-standing male-only admission policy of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in a 7–1 decision. Justice Clarence Thomas, whose son was enrolled at the university at the time, recused himself.
The Roberts Court is the time since 2005 during which the Supreme Court of the United States has been led by John Roberts as Chief Justice. Roberts succeeded William Rehnquist as Chief Justice after Rehnquist's death.
Jeffrey Stuart Sutton is an American lawyer and jurist serving as the Chief United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
"The Supremes" is the seventeenth episode of the fifth season of American serial political drama television series The West Wing. It originally aired on NBC on March 24, 2004. In "The Supremes", the White House senior staff, under Democratic President Josiah Bartlet, looks to nominate a judge to the Supreme Court of the United States when Josh comes up with a plan to, instead of nominating a centrist to the seat, nominate one liberal and one conservative candidate to two seats on the Court. The episode was met with mixed reception, although it was later noted the show bore similarities to the 2016 death and replacement of real-life Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Martin Edward Whelan III is an American lawyer, legal activist and political commentator. Whelan's legal career included clerking for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and serving as a deputy assistant attorney general during the George W. Bush administration. From 2004 to 2021, he served as the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank "dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy".
Speculation abounded over potential nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States by Ronald Reagan even before his presidency officially began, due to the advanced ages of several justices, and Reagan's own highlighting of Supreme Court nominations as a campaign issue. Reagan had promised "to appoint only those opposed to abortion and the 'judicial activism' of the Warren and Burger Courts". Conversely, some opposed to Reagan argued that he could "appoint as many as five Justices" and would "use the opportunity to stack the Court against women, minorities and social justice".
Edward Gero is an American stage actor active primarily in the Washington, DC area, acclaimed for his performances in Shakespeare and other classical plays.
Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I, is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.
On March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to succeed Antonin Scalia, who had died one month earlier. At the time of his nomination, Garland was the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
With the advice and consent of the United States Senate, the president of the United States appoints the members of the Supreme Court of the United States, which is the highest court of the federal judiciary of the United States. Following his victory in the 2016 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump took office as president on January 20, 2017, and faced an immediate vacancy on the Supreme Court due to the February 2016 death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
Amy Vivian Coney Barrett is an American lawyer and jurist serving since 2020 as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The fifth woman to serve on the court, she was nominated by President Donald Trump. Barrett was a U.S. circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 2017 to 2020.
RBG is a 2018 American documentary film focusing on the life and career of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second female Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States after Sandra Day O'Connor. After premiering at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, the film was released in the United States on May 4, 2018. The film was directed and produced by Betsy West and Julie Cohen.
Scalia/Ginsburg is a 2015 comic opera by composer-librettist Derrick Wang about the relationship between United States Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Called "a dream come true" by Justice Ginsburg, the opera has been broadcast nationally on the radio in the United States, produced in the United States and internationally, and featured on Live with Carnegie Hall.
John Gregory Strand is an American playwright. Among his plays are Lincolnesque, Three Nights in Tehran, The Diaries, Otabenga, and The Originalist. Tom Walker is an adaption of The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving. He has also written a number of English-language adaptions of plays written in French: among these are Lovers and Executioners ; The Miser (Molière); Lorenzaccio ; Hat! ; and Hernani.
