…Regardless of whether one agrees with him, his textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation have been driving the academic debate.”, “Notable & Quotable: Honorary Degrees”, The Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2015

Notable & Quotable: Honorary Degrees

No Ivy League university has awarded an honorary degree to a conservative justice now serving on the Supreme Court.

The Sterling Memorial Library on the Yale University campus in New Haven, Conn. Photo: Craig Warga/Bloomberg News

Aug. 14, 2015 6:40 p.m. ET

John O. McGinnis writing online for the Library of Law and Liberty, July 20:

Of the fourteen honorary degrees bestowed by Ivy League institutions to living Supreme Court justices twelve went to those on the left of the Court. Justice Ginsburg is the champ: she has an honorary degree from every Ivy League university except Cornell and Cornell does not award honorary degrees. And she is by some political science measures the farthest to the left on the Court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor has two such degrees (Princeton, Yale) and Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens and David Souter have one each (Penn, Princeton, and Harvard respectively). . . .

Against all this celebration of left-liberalism, Brown and Yale did give honorary degrees to Sandra Day O’Connor, the swing justice of her day and a moderate conservative. But no Ivy League University has ever awarded such a degree to anyone sitting now on the right of the Court. What makes this performance even more obviously ideologically driven is that these academic institutions have neglected the one who has had the most academic influence— Antonin Scalia. Regardless of whether one agrees with him, his textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation have been driving the academic debate. . . . There is also a direct head to head comparison of justices: Samuel Alito graduated from the same college and law school as Sonia Sotomayor and has been on the Court longer, but both schools have honored her and not him with honorary degrees.