Justice Scalia in the lion's den

Justice Scalia spoke this week at the University of Michigan law school. Of course, he dissented in the Supreme Court opinion that upheld the school's use of race as a factor in admissions, which makes his appearance all the more interesting. He had been scheduled to speak last year, but because the case was still pending, he postponed the event until this year. UM law student Heidi Bond live-blogged the speech and Q&A, and can be read here.

I heard Justice Scalia speak at Regent University when I was a law student there, and from what I have read (now) and recall (from then), his comments at UM are remarkably consistent with what he said six years ago at Regent. One of the most engaging things about Scalia is his sense of humor, sometimes self-deprecating, which was on display in this comment from Heidi Bond (scroll to bottom of post):

"The first guy to ask a question basically said, 'Here are some bad things you've done. You bad man. And you had so many opportunities. You said that blacks can't get affirmative action because they're not good enough. But you got to go to a super-duper law school. You terrible, terrible over-privileged man.' And so forth. After about a minute, someone from the audience yelled out 'Question?' Scalia responded with, 'The question is going to be, "And isn't that true?"'"