Justice Antonin Scalia died on Saturday at age 79 after almost 30 years on the U.S. Supreme Court. He consistently employed a judicial philosophy calling for courts to interpret statutes based on their common meaning, supported by an understanding of the reasoning of those who drafted the law — whether it be the Constitution or a statute like the Bankruptcy Code.

Commonly referred to as “originalism” or “plain meaning,” Justice Scalia’s philosophy led to a more static view of the Constitution. In the sphere of bankruptcy law, his approach was neither result-oriented nor tied to an economic theory favoring debtors or creditors. Consistently applied, Justice Scalia’s methodology produced noteworthy and sometimes unexpected results.

In time, some facets of bankruptcy law reverted to his way of thinking. For example, he authored a vigorous dissent when the court held in the 1992 opinion of Dewsnup v. Timm that a Chapter 7 debtor cannot strip down a lien to the value of collateral. At oral argument last year in Bank of America v. Caulkett, he noted that the majority in Dewsnup had disregarded the plain meaning of the statute to implement a policy without support in the law.

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