The legal commentariat seems to have settled on the view that newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will fill the seat left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia both literally and as a like-minded successor in jurisprudential spirit.1
While Justice Scalia is commonly considered an arch-conservative legal scholar, his commitment to originalism often led him to places one would not expect to find him based on a simple liberal-conservative dichotomy. In particular, Justice Scalia often wound up in unusual majority lineups regarding the rights of criminal defendants.2 For example, he wrote for the court in United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688 (1993), a 5-4 opinion holding that double jeopardy bars prosecution of conduct for which the defendant has previously been held in contempt of court; Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), which voided the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act as unconstitutionally vague; and United States v. Santos, 553 U.S. 507 (2008), another 5-4 opinion that interpreted the term “proceeds” under the money-laundering statute as referring only to net income/profits, and not to gross income.
