"Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor....."
True.
Scalia dedicated his professional life to making war on the most fundamental principles of Constitutional jurisprudence: the settled and accepted case law that serves as the underpinning of the rule of law, safeguarding our rights and protected liberties from the capricious whims of the 'will of the people,' and the desire of many to codify their fear, ignorance, hate, and bigotry.
It is indeed fortunate that Scalia mostly failed, but that doesn't mean our rights and protected liberties are no longer in jeopardy – a republican president in the WH next year would result in a Supreme Court packed with reactionary conservative ideologues, disciples of Scalia's errant, wrongheaded dogma of 'originalism,' justices likewise hostile to the inalienable rights of the people and the rule of law.