James Rosen

And this is about what it was like when I was 30 years old and not a lawyer, still not a lawyer, to have lunch with Antonin Scalia where we're knocking back red wine.

And he overruled my lunch order, Steve.

America's foremost opponent of judicial activism.

When I ordered the veal at his favorite restaurant, now gone, the A.V.

Ristorante Italiano,

He overruled my order and said to the waiter, give him the rabbit.

And we both looked at him and said, rabbit?

He goes, yeah, you're going to like the rabbit.

Give him the rabbit.

I didn't want rabbit, and I haven't had it since, Steve.

And all of this appears in this book, Scalia, Supreme Court Years, 1986 to 2001, out today.

Well, I wouldn't even confine him to political history because when you're one of the nine justices sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States, your rulings, your decisions are going to touch every aspect of American life.

Scalia's legacy as a justice is profound and stretches across all known sectors of American life.

One example is criminal defendants' rights.

And he wrote a key opinion, for example, that held it unconstitutional.

for accused sex offenders who've been charged with crimes against minors.

He held it was unconstitutional at trial for such an individual for a screen to be placed between the defendant and the young minor who was going through the trauma of testifying.

And Scalia said, hey, as a textualist, as an originalist, the Sixth Amendment right to confront your accuser, and he busted out the dictionaries,

Confront means confront.

It means eyeball to eyeball.