Antonin (Anthony) Scalia, the Senior Justice on the Supreme Court died in bed at age 79. He fought for freedom and the constitution without fail, whether he was on the bench or not. He battled the forces of liberalism. and their desire to rewrite the constitution by judicial fiat, right to the end. No other Supreme Court Justice comes close to the passion and fervor with which he fearlessly protected the constitution, and the people of the United States.

In the long history of the U.S. Supreme Court a few justices have made a long lasting impression.  John Marshall, the 13th justice to be nominated, set the precedent of the court determining the constitutionality of laws (not just the case before them). Louis Brandeis is probably the most quoted of the Supreme Court Justices.  Although his record on liberty was not without blemish, he was at his best when excoriating the court for infringing on the rights of the people. Earl Warren, although nominated by a conservative President, became an activist jurist without equal.  His decisions created new “rights” out of whole cloth and used parts of the constitution, like the commerce clause, in ways wholly unintended in order to justify his decisions. Add to this line of influential giants the name of Justice Scalia.

Scalia was a tireless advocate for the rule of law, he stood by the constitution like no other.  Insisting that only original intent was the proper method for interpreting the United States most hallowed document, he set a new standard for others to follow. Standing against the liberal tide, he fought for ordered liberty of the kind that sparked the Revolution. Never one to back away from his views, he was ever clear eyed and unambiguous. His statements from the bench, like those of Brandeis, are likely to be quoted for generations.

National Review quoted Scalia in memoriam with the following: “This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied… by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the people of their most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776, the freedom to govern themselves.” This was a quote from the gay marriage ruling. In it he also said, “Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court…This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment.” A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.” Similar, even if not as forthright, statements can be found throughout his career. Freedom and the constitution were his passions, and something he was always at the ready to defend.

Ted Cruz, a former clerk for the Supreme Court, knew Scalia. He tweeted out,  “Today our Nation mourns the loss of one of the greatest Justices in history – Justice Antonin Scalia. A champion of our liberties and a stalwart defender of the Constitution, he will go down as one of the few Justices who single-handedly changed the course of legal history.

As liberals and conservatives alike would agree, through his powerful and persuasive opinions, Justice Scalia fundamentally changed how courts interpret the Constitution and statutes, returning the focus to the original meaning of the text after decades of judicial activism. And he authored some of the most important decisions ever, including District of Columbia v. Heller, which recognized our fundamental right under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms. He was an unrelenting defender of religious liberty, free speech, federalism, the constitutional separation of powers, and private property rights. All liberty-loving Americans should be in mourning.