US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at the Cambridge Union

One of the greatest - and most controversial - legal minds of a generation will be speaking to the Cambridge Union on Wednesday 9th March at 3:00pm.

Known for his outspoken views and often-caustic judgments, Justice Scalia has spent 25 years on the US Supreme Court. He is a well-known proponent of the originalist school of constitutional interpretation, basing his construction of the US Constitution on what the text was originally intended to mean and denying the power of judges to change the meaning of its provisions.

Whilst often called "conservative", this grossly oversimplifies the positions he has taken: he is a strong proponent of freedom of speech and many of the rights of defendants in criminal trials, but deferent to executive power regarding national security and Guantanamo. He recently courted controversy in an interview to a magazine where he suggested that the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution was never intended to apply to sexual discrimination or sexual orientation, and that legislation rather than court action was the way for people seeking to ban those forms of discrimination to go.

Described as the "intellectual anchor" of the conservative wing of the Court, and also as the Justice most likely to provoke laughter in the courtroom, this truly is a unique opportunity to meet a leading light of legal thought. For anyone interested in the law, or anyone interested in the United States, this is an unmissable speech.