But lately my students have been turning in legal briefs laced with derision and ad hominem barbs. For this trend, I largely blame Scalia. My students read his work, find it amusing and imitate his truculent style.

Scalia has long relied on ridicule. In past years he has dismissed his colleagues’ decisions as “nothing short of ludicrous” and “beyond absurd,” “entirely irrational” and not “pass[ing] the most gullible scrutiny.” He has called them “preposterous” and “so unsupported in reason and so absurd in application [as] unlikely to survive.”…

Scalia’s spiteful recent dissents probably reflect frustration; after all, he was on the losing side of several major cases. Still, that’s no excuse for lashing out. Nor should either liberals or conservatives dismiss such behavior as just “Scalia being Scalia.”

If legal professionals ignore Scalia’s meanness or — worse — pass around his insults at cocktail parties like Wildean witticisms, they’ll encourage a new generation of peevish, callous scoffers.