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On Getting It Right: Remembering Justice Antonin Scalia, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

In the summer of 1985, when then-Judge Antonin Scalia’s three law clerks were finishing their term at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, we1 gave him a plaque emblazoned with the phrase, “It’s hard to get it right.” That was a phrase that Judge, and later Justice, Scalia’s law clerks heard often—never in anger, never in rebuke, but always as a reminder (often accompanied by a wry smile) that . . . well, sometimes it’s hard to get it right.