<P> Antonin Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey and was an only child . His father, Salvatore Eugene Scalia (1903--1986), an Italian immigrant from Sommatino, Sicily, was a graduate student at Columbia University and clerk at the time of his son's birth . The elder Scalia would become a professor of Romance languages at Brooklyn College, where he was an adherent to the formalist New Criticism school of literary theory . His mother, Catherine Louise (née Panaro) Scalia (1905--1985), was born in Trenton to Italian immigrant parents and worked as an elementary school teacher . </P> <P> In 1939, Scalia and his family moved to the Elmhurst section of Queens, New York, where he attended P.S. 13 . After completing eighth grade in public school, he obtained an academic scholarship to Xavier High School, a Jesuit military school in Manhattan, where he graduated first in the class of 1953 and served as valedictorian . He later stated that he spent much of his time on schoolwork and admitted, "I was never cool". While a youth, he was also active as a Boy Scout and was part of the Scouts' national honor society, the Order of the Arrow . </P> <P> Classmate and future New York State official William Stern remembered Scalia in his high school days: "This kid was a conservative when he was 17 years old . An archconservative Catholic . He could have been a member of the Curia . He was the top student in the class . He was brilliant, way above everybody else ." </P> <P> In 1953, Scalia enrolled at Georgetown University, where he graduated valedictorian and summa cum laude in 1957 with a Bachelor of Arts in history . While in college, he was a champion collegiate debater in Georgetown's Philodemic Society and a critically praised thespian . He took his junior year abroad at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland . Scalia studied law at Harvard Law School, where he was a Notes Editor for the Harvard Law Review . He graduated magna cum laude in 1960, becoming a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University . The fellowship enabled him to travel in Europe during 1960 and 1961 . </P>

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