Before he served on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia was a Boy Scout

Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who died Saturday, was a Cub Scout, Boy Scout and a member of the Order of the Arrow.

CBS Sunday Morning and other outlets have been sharing the photo above (and at the end of this post), which depicts a young Scalia in his Boy Scout uniform. He’s wearing the unmistakable white sash indicating his membership in the Order of the Arrow, Scouting’s national honor society.

In Bruce Allen Murphy’s biography, Scalia: A Court of One, Murphy writes that it was Scalia’s mother who taught him life lessons. For young Antonin, those lessons began in Cub Scouts.

“[My mother made] sure I did the right things, hung out with the right people, joined the right organizations … [and] associated with young people that would not get me into trouble, but rather would make me a better person,” he recalled. “She made it her job to know who I was hanging out with. We had them over to my house, and she was a den mother for the Cub Scouts, things of that sort.”

Eventually, Murphy writes, Scalia crossed over into Boy Scouting and “attended Boy Scout camp every summer.”

Scalia was not the only former Scout on the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Stephen Breyer is a Distinguished Eagle Scout, and Justice Anthony Kennedy was a Boy Scout as a young man.

Antonin-Scalia-Boy-Scouts-and-Order-of-the-Arrow


About Bryan Wendell 3282 Articles
Bryan Wendell, an Eagle Scout, is the founder of Bryan on Scouting and a contributing writer.