Justice Antonin Scalia cracked a joke about the devil Thursday night during a discussion with Harvard’s Marvin Kalb that was televised on C-SPAN.
Toward the end, Kalb took questions from members of the audience. The first question was for Scalia: “Why are you the way that you are?”
The audience burst out laughing as the jurist grimaced, shook his head, smiled and began laughing himself. After a long, awkward pause, he threw up his hands and responded.
“The devil makes me do it,” said Scalia.
The Reagan-appointed justice has discussed the devil several times in the last year. In October, he told New York magazine that the devil was “a real person.” During oral arguments the following month in a case about legislative prayer, he invoked “devil worshippers” in a seemingly tongue-in-cheek remark.
Watch the footage here, at the 58:40 minute mark. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a good friend of Scalia’s, also took part in the discussion.
