The unexpected death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday deprives the high court of its longest-serving and arguably most-outspoken member. And, from the American public’s perspective, one of the high court’s controversial figures. In July of last year, popular perceptions of the conservative jurist were evenly divided, with 29% seeing him favorably and 27% unfavorably. Scalia, whom one prominent legal scholar named “the most influential justice of the last quarter-century,” was nonetheless unknown to nearly a third of Americans (32%) and generated no opinion from another 12% in 2015, Scalia’s 29th year on the nation’s top court.

Scalia was well-known for his political leanings, but it was only late in his career that, according to Gallup data, he became a polarizing figure with Americans who were familiar enough to have an opinion of the first Italian-American to serve on the Supreme Court. In 2000, despite the controversy hanging over the court — particularly Scalia and the other four justices who decided the Bush v. Gore case that handed the presidency to George W. Bush — nearly twice as many Americans had a favorable view of Scalia as unfavorable, 36% vs. 17%. Scalia maintained a similar proportion of support in 2005, though slightly more Americans did not know him or had no opinion of him.