The newly confirmed justice can become an embittered partisan—or he can surprise people.
Justices acquitted themselves well during oral arguments on two pivotal cases this week.
The Supreme Court okays unwarranted DNA swabs, but Scalia says Patrick Henry would disapprove.
If he had met a conservative Court on its own ground, the solicitor general could have notched a victory for liberalism—and helped safeguard campaign-finance protections.
The liberal justices expanded the rights of corporations, without considering the limits of that doctrine.
And how the Court's dissenters used the exact same reason to draw the opposite conclusion.