Letter: Scalia was outstanding jurist

Justice Scalia had a superb intellect and was an outstanding scholar and jurist; he was one of the most influential Supreme Court Justices in our history. To his friends he was a jovial companion, witty and fun. He was kind and generous.

You really should go out and read 'The Scalia I Knew Will Be Greatly Missed,” by Cass Sunstein, a liberal professor at Harvard. He describes how Scalia helped him when he was a first-year law student and as a junior professor: www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-14/the-scalia-i-knew-will-be-greatly-missed. Scalia and Sunstein were on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, but they were friends, as was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She says she and Justice Scalia were best buddies. She is the leftmost Justice on the Court.

Scalia was a strict Constitutionalist who believed the law, and judicial decisions, should rely solely on the actual words of the Constitution and the intentions of the men who wrote it.

Yet he said his finest achievement was his decision to take from the State of Florida the power to decide the results of the 2000 election in their state. It was messy, he said. True.

However, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution reads: 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

May he rest in peace.

Hal Dendurent

Mount Vernon