The same would be true of “equal protection” and other broad provisions of the Constitution.

So, in my classroom debate with the justice, I challenged him with the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended racial segregation of public schools in the Southern states. As a matter of indisputable historic fact, following the Civil War the “people” who “adopted” the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment had to take into account what would surely be the continued segregation of public schools, and not only in the Deep South. Had they suggested that the Equal Protection Clause meant the immediate end of all segregated public education, the amendment itself would never have become a reality. All that the proponents — even the most radical among them — could hope for was that over time, attitudes toward racial differences would “evolve” and that the powerful words “equal protection of the laws” would eventually be interpreted to require public schools to be equal and not separate, instead of “separate but equal” as the Supreme Court had permitted in 1896.

I asked Justice Scalia, whether if had he been on the court in 1954, he could have joined the unanimous court without violating his principle of originalism. He was both candid and self-effacing in his response, saying that no theory of constitutional interpretation — including originalism — was perfect. But he still insisted that originalism was “better” and “safer” than any other theory, because it precluded honest judges from substituting their own philosophies for those of the founding generation. In his own provocative words: “Show Scalia the original meaning, and he is prevented from imposing his nasty, conservative views upon the people. He is handcuffed. And if he tries to dissemble, he will be caught out.”

But was he really handcuffed?

Consider the monumental case of Bush v. Gore, which may have decided the 2000 presidential election. In my book “Supreme Injustice,” I once again challenged Justice Scalia. I showed that until Bush v. Gore, Justice Scalia had taken an extremely narrow view of “equal protection,” rejecting the notion that judges should depart from its original understanding in the 14th Amendment as referring to racial inequality. He had railed against imposing “progressively higher degrees” of equality in other contexts. He wrote that when a practice “not expressly prohibited by the text of the Bill of Rights bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread and unchallenged use that dates back to the beginning of the Republic, we have no proper basis for striking it down.” In so writing, Justice Scalia could easily have been describing Florida’s practice of allowing manual recounts in the case of contested election results. But when Bush v. Gore came before the court, he voted to strike down this recount process as violative of — you guessed it — the Equal Protection Clause, citing the unfairness of imposing “arbitrary and disparate treatment” to ballots throughout the state.

I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been, when Justice Scalia responded to my calling him out on this inconsistency in a letter that acknowledged the problem, with a touch of humility and humor:

“If my joining the equal-protection opinion was a mistake, I will be delighted if it is the worse one I make on the job.... I have frankly not revisited the issue, or read the extensive commentary (mostly critical, I gather) concerning it. At the time, however, I thought that ground correct. Even if you think that was wrong, considering the severe time constraints, the pressure to come out with a near-unanimous opinion, and the fact that it did not determine my vote in the case, you should cut me some slack.”

I had also criticized him for granting the stay that effectively ended the recount and the election, pointing out that he routinely voted against granting stays even in capital punishment cases. He responded: “As for the stay: I think I can persuade you it was proper. We will talk about it some time — as you say, before senility.”

We did get to talk about it, but the argument persisted.

Liberal constitutional lawyers will continue to debate Justice Scalia many years after his death, because when it comes to jurisprudence, he was the most transformative jurist of our generation. His views cannot be ignored. That is his enduring legacy. But he was more than an influential justice. He was a great man, who lived life to the fullest — as a devout Catholic, a proud Italian-American, a devoted family man, a loyal friend, and a person of humor and culture who fondly remembered his roots in Queens and New Jersey. “Scalia Speaks” gives us a glimpse of the man, as I came to know and respect him, despite — no, because of — our arguments.