Rick Hasen, acclaimed author and chancellor's professor of law and political science at University of California, Irvine School of Law.

More than two years after his death, U. S. Supreme Court Antonin Scalia's legacy is still a flash point of controversy—and Scalia would probably be OK with that.

Scalia, who died at age 79 in February 2016, was a happy but divisive warrior who filled his decisions and dissents—and he loved writing dissents—with sharp criticism of his colleagues, even though in person, he was a courtly Old World-style gentleman and friend to many.

Several books have come out in the wake of his death, including: “Scalia Speaks,” a praiseful collection of his writings and speeches, many of which had not been public before his death; “Nino and Me,” an intimate and not always flattering memoir by his friend and co-author Bryan Garner; and “The Unexpected Scalia,” a biography that looks at the justice's occasional liberal impulses.

Now comes perhaps the most controversial book on Scalia, “The Justice of Contradictions” by Richard Hasen, a professor of law and politicial science at the University of California, Irvine. Best known for his expertise in election law, Hasen's new book takes a broad view of what he sees as the inconsistencies in Scalia's decision-making. It has drawn criticism from former Scalia clerk Ed Whelan, who called Hasen's critique of Scalia “badly flawed.” Whelan was also co-editor of “Scalia Speaks.”

We recently interviewed Hasen about his book and his legal career:

NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL: Before we talk about your book, please recap how and when you became the Election Law blogger and the go-to guy for all things relating to election law, campaign finance, redistricting, etc.? I remember first meeting you at the Supreme Court years ago, I think, and you were already a star in the blogosphere.

RICK HASEN: I went to law school at UCLA in the late 1980s, where Dan Lowenstein was one of the handful of law professors across the country who was teaching a course in election law. I picked up the course as a professor at Chicago-Kent and loved it. I eventually joined Dan's election law casebook. I started blogging in 2003. The big issues then were whether the courts would uphold the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold law and the myriad legal issues surrounding the California recall.

NLJ: How did your success with the blog affect your academic career? Was blogging as important as writing law review articles in terms of tenure?

HASEN: I got tenure before I started blogging, and I would not recommend extensive blogging or tweeting as the path to tenure. I see the blog as part of my teaching and public service mission, particularly when I can help explain Supreme Court cases and legal developments to a wider audience.

NLJ: How and why did you move into a different lane, so to speak, with the Scalia book, when your past books have been about election law?

HASEN: I have long been fascinated by Justice Scalia. He was not influential by the typical measures, such as writing a great number of majority opinions in the major cases, or by being a swing justice. Instead, it was the sheer force of his ideas and the strength and style of his writing which earned him outsized influence over both how lawyers and judges decide cases and how they talk. I found the subject irresistible, especially given what I see as the fundamental contradiction of his jurisprudence and role as a public intellectual—he delegitimized the court by denigrating his colleagues all in the name of legitimating the court.

NLJ: You call Scalia a disrupter. In the other branches of government, a disrupter can shake things up. But at the Supreme Court, a disrupter who antagonizes his colleagues can lose votes and end up not winning majorities. I have often thought that Scalia at some point decided he would rather throw bombs from the sidelines than win cases. Do you agree, and why do you think he took that course?

HASEN: I argue that Scalia disrupted the Supreme Court the way Newt Gingrich disrupted the House of Representatives and Trump is disrupting the presidency. He changed the institution. He attacked the other justices, not simply on an ad hominem basis, but by claiming that the other justices were doing politics while he was doing law. He convinced an entire generation of conservative and libertarian law students and lawyers that his way is the only principled way to decide cases. He may not have won over Kennedy, but he's changed the farm team in ways that will affect the next generation. He was playing the long game.

NLJ: Even before Scalia died, Justice Kagan said, “We are all textualists” because of him. You point out that he invoked textualist principles when it suited him and sometimes ignored textualism altogether when it didn't. Do you think textualism will recede or weaken without Scalia at the helm?

HASEN: The textualist approach to statutory interpretation is Scalia's most enduring legacy, much more than his originalist approach to constitutional interpretation. Kagan's remark shows that in ordinary case, textualist tools will do a lot of the work. So judges are much more apt to turn to dictionaries and rules of grammar as a start than a Senate committee report. But many still will look at legislative history, and, in hard cases with an ideological valence, textualism will no more constrain judges than more eclectic approaches to interpretation.

NLJ: You wrote in Slate that Scalia's legacy is only getting stronger in death, even though, as you put it, his decisions were “driven more by ideology than methodology.” Why is his legacy getting stronger?

HASEN: I say at the beginning of the book that Justice Scalia was a polarizing justice in polarized times. He has been deified by the right, and conservative orthodoxy believes that he had found the one true path to interpret the Constitution and statutes. On the left, he's been villainized, and justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg instead are treated as royalty. Scalia helped create the modern polarized judicial celebrity.

NLJ: You say that Justice Gorsuch has tried to emulate Scalia in some ways. How so, and how do you think Gorsuch is doing so far?

HASEN: Gorsuch has pledged fidelity to Scalia's methodology, and decided early cases using it. He's also made snarky remarks like Scalia suggesting that other justices who disagree with him are doing politics, not law. What's missing is Scalia's charm. I think a lot of people miss that.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Justice Antonin Scalia's age.