When I read this, I couldn't help thinking of this:
The silver Swan, who, living, had no Note,
When Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.
Leaning her breast upon the reedy shore,
Thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
"Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!
More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise."
In other burials of Caesar, former University of Chicago law students have had some unkind things to say about how Scalia treated minorities:
Ben Streeter, now an attorney with the Federal Election Commission and a former black student of Scalia’s, told Gawker that although he in fact passed Scalia’s course, he, too, noticed preferential treatment towards white students. Streeter said the final exam in one of Scalia’s classes included an unprecedented short-answer section, with answers that weren't covered in class. Streeter suspected Scalia had mentioned the material with students who came to visit him outside of class.
“In those days, the only students who came by to visit him were in the Federalist Society group,” Streeter told Gawker. “There was not a single black member of the Federalist Society in my three years at the University of Chicago.”
Phillip Hampton, the former president of the University of Chicago’s Black Student Law Association, told Gawker that he found it strange that “every black student’s lowest grade was in Scalia’s class.” He also remembered Scalia once saying that he could “usually tell papers that were written by African Americans,” even if they had no names on them.
Scalia at least remained perfectly consistent in these attitudes throughout his tenure in the Federal Courts. Remember last December, when he said black students should stay on the short bus?
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Tony. We'll be clawing back Scalia's revanchist, racist, repulsive judicial legacy for two generations—or if not, we'll be a country I don't want to live in.