By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press

Veteran reporter Joan Biskupic's "American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia" (Sarah Crichton Books, 2009) is a balanced look at the 73-year-old high-court justice.

"American Original" traces Scalia's life from his beginnings as the precocious only child of Italian immigrants to his role as the adored (by the right), outspoken bulwark of the court's conservative bloc.

Scalia is more frequently in the majority now than at any point in his 23 years on the court and, seemingly, at the peak of his influence. His most important opinion so far was last year's decision establishing a person's right to keep and bear arms for self defense, which struck down the strict District of Columbia gun-control law and could end up causing such laws to be rewritten elsewhere.

Biskupic rightly attributes Scalia's greater prominence to the changed, more conservative membership of the court as much as to the force of his ideas.

When Hon. Sandra Day O'Connor retired and was replaced by Hon. Samuel Alito in 2006, Scalia gained a reliable ally and a crucial fifth vote in cases involving abortion, race and campaign-finance restrictions that simply wasn't available before then.

Biskupic also makes quite a strong case that among Scalia's biggest fans is the justice himself. "It takes courage not to be politically correct," he said.

Biskupic has plenty of material to work with, sharp words and outright insults - including the infamous Sicilian chin flick - that he has doled out over the years to other justices, reporters, lawyers and members of the public whose questions rub him the wrong way.

A recent case in point: A 20-year-old college student at an event in Florida to promote Scalia's book on advocacy asked why justices refuse to open their courtroom to cameras even as they take to the road to sell books. "That's a nasty, impolite question," he snapped.

There are almost no revelations here, a bit surprising since Biskupic is USA Today's court writer and among the best at ferreting out stories from the cloistered justices. She had terrific access for the book, a dozen interviews with Scalia; almost all the other justices are quoted by name in the book.

One tidbit concerns the brouhaha over Scalia's hunting trip with then-Vice President Dick Cheney at the same time the court was considering a case involving Cheney.

Biskupic says that several other justices - she names Hon. Anthony Kennedy and O'Connor - grew uncomfortable with the unwelcome attention Scalia was attracting. But other than Scalia's "obvious hurt feelings," there were no apparent repercussions within the court, and Scalia pointedly refused to step aside from the case.

Scalia's lifelong love of hunting also figures, peripherally, in the gun-rights case.

Scalia likes to talk about hunting and his game of choice is turkeys, wily creatures with superb eyesight, he said.

"You get one shot," he said. "If you miss, the whole day's ruined."

Unless you're the turkey.