Drudge reports the sad news that Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes this morning, at a resort in south Texas. The conservative justice served nearly 30 years on the Court, and earned the reputation as one of its most highly intelligent as well as wittiest members. While reviled by some on the Left, he had a great talent for friendship and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of his closest friends.

Justice Scalia will be remembered as the intellectual champion of Originalism, which holds that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the meaning that Americans would have given to its words at its formation. He turned all his considerable powers of irony to liberal “living constitution” theories, under which its words were unmoored from the text. In a Court of sober judges, he ranged above them all, like a Jonathan Swift, never failing to correct fashionable judicial nonsense with his ridicule.

In private, he was a devoted son of the Church, and immensely proud of his son, Father Paul Scalia. He was also a good friend of this magazine, and our thoughts and prayers go to his wife and family.