My own anecdote about Justice Scalia is that he once hired me for my dream job because I wouldn’t stop arguing with him. At the time he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Regulation, working remotely from his main job at the University of Chicago where he taught law (as did Barack Obama, years later), and flying in to Washington to spend time at its offices every few weeks.
The late Anne Brunsdale, who handled the magazine’s day-to-day editing, had recommended me as her deputy, but Nino quickly sized me up at the interview (as he told her afterward) as not a forceful enough personality to stand up to the oft-aggressive lawyers and economists who wrote for the magazine and who sometimes had to be given a firm editorial no. He changed his mind after I volunteered that I had read a number of his recent writings and wanted to challenge some of the ideas in them.



What was intended to last a few minutes went on for much longer than an hour as I battled for my barely-out-of-college libertarian views, which he countered in a pleasant enough fashion but clearly saw as naive. You win, Anne, he said afterward: anyone who enjoys arguing that much will fit in here.