Antonin Scalia

BOSTON - How did we end the summer on such a prickly little piece of the political landscape - stuck between a Roberts and a hard place? We've spent months pouring over 60,000 pages from the National Archives and reams of personal profiles for clues about how Judge John G. Roberts Jr. would rule on the highest court in the land. And all we got from this paper trail is a handful of confetti. The record shows him arguing both for and against affirmative action, for and against environment regulations.

WASHINGTON -- In the wake of the Supreme Court's refusa to hear the Guam case, the operative question now is whether abortion rights will continue to be an important issue in national -- politics -- or one largely fought out in state capitals. Many politicians in Congress would not be unhappy to see the latter.The message in the court's ruling is that even after 12 years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush there simply isn't a majority on the court for overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

WASHINGTON -- Journalists and authors who deliberately make up quotes may be assessed heavy damages for libel, but only if the phony quotations harm the source's reputation and have a different meaning than the source intended, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 yesterday.In its first-ever ruling on how libel law applies to intentional misquotation, the court compromised between taking away all constitutional protection for deliberately false quotes and allowing complete freedom to put quotes into sources' mouths.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court - minus Justice Antonin Scalia - agreed yesterday to decide whether a public school's daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to "one nation under God" is an exercise in patriotism or an official endorsement of religion. The eight justices will hear arguments on the issue early next year, and a decision is expected by late June. Scalia, one of the court's most conservative justices, withdrew from the case, apparently because of his public comments in January about God and the pledge.

Samuel Anthony Alito Jr., from early in his judicial career, has been likened to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia -- they're both Italian-Americans, both born in Trenton, N.J., both cut from a conservative cloth. In liberal circles where it isn't meant as a compliment, Alito long ago earned the nickname "Scalito," literally translated as "Little Scalia." So yesterday, when Alito was introduced as President Bush's nominee to replace retiring Sandra Day O'Connor on the same bench as Scalia, the comparisons began anew.

There are flagrant, undefined loopholes in Maryland's abortion law. That's what letter writer Jeffrey D. Meister, director of administration and legislation for Maryland Right to Life, would have us think ("Maryland has de factor abortion on demand," May 17). What do "health" and a minor's "best interests" mean under Maryland's abortion law? Their plain meaning is derived from an ordinary understanding of the words, most often found in a dictionary. That's the analysis favored by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America By Jeffrey Rosen The author, a law professor and legal affairs editor at The New Republic, profiles four pairs of contrasting personalities: President Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall; Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Marshall Harlan; Justices William O. Douglas and Hugo Black; and finally Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. Jefferson, Holmes, Douglas and Scalia are Rosen's exemplars of judicially counterproductive temperaments: They are ideologues, too invested in promoting the purity of their ideas to exert long-term influence on constitutional law. Far more persuasive for Rosen are Marshall, Harlan, Black and Rehnquist, distinguished by collegiality and willingness to compromise and to subordinate their own agendas to the prestige of the court.

LOS ANGELES -- The final legal barriers to Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s landmark purchase of MCA Inc. fell yesterday, clearing the way for the completion of the $6.59 billion deal.U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real in Los Angeles denied a summary judgment motion sought by MCA shareholder Lawrence Epstein and others. Mr. Epstein had charged that a preferred stock payment given to MCA Chairman Lew R. Wasserman was unfair to the entertainment company's common stockholders, but Judge Real ruled that there was insufficient cause to grant an injunction.

The 52-48 Senate confirmation of Clarence Thomas yesterday brought more negative votes than any justice has ever received. Five of his future Supreme Court colleagues won unanimous Senate approval, and one won an apparently unanimous voice vote.These are the Senate votes on each of the other sitting justices:Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist1971 vote on first appointment as a justice: 68-261986 vote on his elevation to chief justice: 65-33Justice Byron R. White (1962): no recorded vote; approved by voice voteJustice Harry A. Blackmun (1970)

WASHINGTON -- The dividing line in yesterday's Supreme Court ruling was straight down the middle -- the five justices to the right of center on the winning side, the four to the left losing.The court's most conservative justices -- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- anchored the majority, with the chief justice writing the main opinion that strongly supported states' rights against federal power. Justice Thomas wrote a separate opinion taking an even harder line on the constitutional dispute over Congress' authority.