This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people. And we love to

tell stories about everything on this show, including the American dream and the law. This next story,

the story of Justice Antonin and Scalia, is about both. Here to tell the story of this remarkable man

and judge is James Rosen, author of Scalia,

rise to greatness. And by the way, you can find our discussion of the earlier life of Justice

Scalia and our American Stories.com. Here to continue the story is James Rosen.

Scalia wound up attending Harvard Law School, and it was terribly grinding work.

He said he would not look back on his years at Harvard Law School with misty-eyed mellow

reflection just because the sheer workload was so punishing.

He wound up graduating in the top five of his class at Harvard Law School.

But the best thing that happened to him while he was at Harvard Law was that young Antonin Scalia

was set up on a blind date with a Radcliffe student, every inch his intellectual equal, named

Maureen McCarthy. She had heard about him in advance that he was some big deal on the campus of Harvard

law, but she thought, gosh, it sounds like he might be dull. And in fact, the date was that

he brought Maureen to a Harvard Law Review dinner. This was his idea of a good time out on the town.

So knowing all this in advance, Maureen privately connived to

have an out so that if she weren't enjoying the evening, she could make a phone call and say that

she had a curfew. But she found young Nino Scalia so mesmerizing, so brilliant, so enchanting,

so vivid and funny to be around,

that she went and made the phone call at the appointed hour, but then connived another excuse and told him this so that she could stay out, and they stayed out till one in the morning together.

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