Lawmaker Opposes George Mason Name Change To #ASSLaw

Who's the ASSoL now, George Mason?

Who's the ASSoL now, GMU? (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

Who’s the ASSoL now, George Mason? (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

The Board of Visitors of George Mason University has made a mistake in agreeing to rename its law school for the late Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Members of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, who must approve the name change, should exercise their prerogative not to. …

Even Scalia’s greatest admirers would admit he was a polarizing figure in the legal community. Unlike some of the truly great jurists who have sat on the court, he was not the author of any groundbreaking opinion that moved our society forward. …

Rather, he is best known for his caustic dissents, laced with pointed and often personal attacks on his fellow court members and for being a champion of the idea of originalism. That is, trying to imagine what the original authors of the Constitution, all of whom were white males and many of whom owned slaves, would think of issues, such as affirmative action or same-sex marriage.

A law school named for Scalia is likely to be as polarizing and controversial as the man himself.

— Delegate Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax), in an op-ed piece published by the Washington Post, where he criticizes and opposes George Mason University School of Law for “selling the naming rights to the law school to anonymous donors.” He is circulating a petition, asking that the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia refuse to accept the school’s name change to the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University, or its lame attempt to rebrand itself as the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason in the wake of embarrassing acronyms like ASSLaw and ASSoL spreading like wildfire across social media.

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