His dissenting opinions have won him "a nearly cult-like following among many conservatives," said author Kevin A. Ring, whose book "Scalia Dissents" contains the justice's writings in a dozen areas of law.
Still, much more than memorable dissents were predicted when the Senate unanimously confirmed Scalia, then a federal appellate judge, to the high court in 1986. A former law professor, he was seen as smart, witty and charming. Many thought he would lead a conservative counterrevolution.
But he has not quite lived up to early expectations.
His temperament may be to blame, George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen says in a new book accompanying a PBS series on the Supreme Court. Rosen writes that Scalia's acerbic style and his know-it-all manner have turned colleagues against him.
Scalia's conservative admirers say the blame lies not with him but with other Republican-appointed justices, such as Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and O'Connor, who turned out not to be true conservatives.
"He is not a split-the-difference type of jurist, and he has needed one extra person on his side," Eastland said. "Consider how different it would have been had Bork been confirmed." In October 1987, conservative Robert H. Bork, then a federal appellate judge, was rejected for the Supreme Court seat that Kennedy eventually filled.
With Bork at his side, Scalia and then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist would have had a majority to overturn Roe vs. Wade in the early 1990s. Instead, they fell one vote short.
Even when in the majority, Scalia has written relatively few major opinions for the court. Rehnquist, during his tenure as chief justice from 1986 to 2005, rarely turned to Scalia, because doing so risked losing the crucial votes of moderates, in particular O'Connor and Kennedy.
Often Scalia and his primary ally on the court, Justice Clarence Thomas, have sought to go further on opinions than the rest of the majority.
But last year, there were signs of change. The new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., turned to Scalia to write two key opinions.
One concerned whether drug evidence should be thrown out because the police, with a search warrant, had rushed into a house. Scalia's opinion not only upheld the evidence but cast doubt on the future of the exclusionary rule, the doctrine that says illegally seized evidence is generally inadmissible.
