UB Law remembers Scalia’s visit to Buffalo

Ilene Fleischmann almost dropped the phone.

She was sitting at her desk in O'Brian Hall when it rang and the conversation started like most do, “Hello Dean Fleischmann.” But then things changed quickly.

“This is Justice Scalia.”

Fleischmann, vice dean for alumni, public relations and communications at the UB Law School, said she will never forget inviting Antonin Scalia to speak in Buffalo.

“He was here to speak before 1,000 lawyers,” Fleischmann said. “Justice Scalia couldn’t have been more gracious, humble and friendly.”

Scalia came to Buffalo in 2002 as the featured speaker at a luncheon sponsored by the Chabad House of Buffalo and the UB Law School.

He wouldn’t let the law firms pay for anything more than their salmon salads, Fleischmann recalled, and she had to return $10,000 in contributions because Scalia didn’t want the appearance of impropriety. He flew coach, she added.

At the event, he took a copy of the Constitution out of his pocket and gave it to then-UB President Bill Greiner, who taught constitutional law, she said.

“He must have had a photographic memory because he recognized me at an event in Washington six months later and greeted me by name,” Fleischmann said.

Errol Meidinger was also at the luncheon that day. And he had a question.

Meidinger, Margaret W. Wong Professor and director of the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy in the law school, wanted to ask Scalia about the difficulties of just relying on originalism, the justice’s constitutional philosophy that interprets the Constitution based solely on people’s assumptions and practices when it was written.

So, Meidinger raised his hand and asked about possible tensions between broad principles in the Constitution and common practices at the time of adoption. He asked, for example, if Scalia was saying that since segregated schools existed at the time the 14th Amendment was adopted, judges could never find them to violate the equal protection requirement.

“He reacted swiftly and said, ‘there you go waving the bloody shirt of Brown v. the Board of Education again,’” Meidinger said. “He went on to say something like ‘I would have thought that was resolved by now’ — I don’t remember his exact words, but in effect he brushed it off and went on to somebody else.

“Justice Scalia was very confident and theatrical, very articulate, but he could also be very sarcastic and dismissive,” he said. “This was one of those cases where I was left feeling he was too confident in his position and too unwilling to address its challenges.”

But for Meidinger, it was a stimulating session and a wonderful opportunity. The luncheon was full of interesting discussion, he said.

“He was his normal, ebullient and pugnacious self,” he said. “Scalia was a very strong writer and by then had been on the court for quite some time, so it was quite an opportunity.”

An opportunity that left Fleischmann struggling to hang on to the phone. But once she regained her composure, she couldn’t believe why the justice was calling.

He had read the press release she wrote and had one change.

“He wanted to delete the word activist,” Fleischmann said. “That was his only request.”