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Antonin Gregory Scalia (1936–2016) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, he came to be described as the intellectual anchor of the Court's conservative wing. Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey, was raised in New York City, attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate, and obtained his law degree from Harvard Law School. After spending six years in a Cleveland law firm, he became a law school professor. In the early 1970s, he served in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He spent most of the Carter years teaching at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the first faculty advisers of the fledgling Federalist Society. In 1982, he was appointed as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Reagan. In 1986, Judge Scalia was appointed by Reagan to the Supreme Court to fill the seat as associate justice vacated when Justice William Rehnquist was elevated to Chief Justice. Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, and took the bench on September 26, 1986. In his nearly three decades on the Court, Justice Scalia staked-out a conservative ideology in his opinions, advocating textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in constitutional interpretation. He was a strong defender of the powers of the Executive Branch, believing presidential power should be paramount in many areas. He opposed affirmative action and other policies that treat minorities as groups. He filed separate opinions in a large number of cases, and, in his minority opinions, often castigated the Court's majority in scathing language.