Fifty years after graduating from Harvard Law School, “Nino” has reached the top of his profession. He has been a Faculty member at the University of Chicago, Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel, and has served on America’s highest court since 1986, where he has positioned himself as the intellectual leader of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court.

Friends say that the hardworking student 50 years ago possessed many of the traits that have defined Associate Justice Antonin G. Scalia’s time on the bench—his relentless work ethic, quick wit, and intellectual weight.

In Law School, friends say, Scalia was fiercely dedicated to his studies.

“For a time in our first year at law school, I lunched daily with Nino and another fellow, but I soon stopped. They would spend lunch going over the notes from their morning classes,” said Richard M. Coleman, who was Scalia’s classmate and friend during college at Georgetown University and law school at Harvard. “I said ‘this is more zealous than I want get.’”

For his part, Scalia admits to spending much of his time at the Law School studying.

“I do not look back at my years at Harvard Law School with great warmth,” he said. “I look back at them with great appreciation. I worked like hell. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time enjoying myself.”

Despite becoming consumed with his academic work and eventually the Harvard Law Review, where he served as an editor, Scalia found time to meet a Radcliffe undergraduate, Maureen T. McCarthy ’60, whom he married.

Scalia, who graduated magna cum laude from the Law School, was not a humorless bookworm, friends say; in fact, many point to his wit as one of his defining characteristics.

“He was jovial, gregarious, good company, liked company, a good talker, could be quite funny in conversation,” Harvard Law School Professor Frank I. Michelman, who graduated from the Law School with Scalia, wrote in an e-mail.

The Justice’s humorous bent has also influenced his work on the Court.

He is known for writing sometimes caustic dissenting opinions, according Harvard Law School Professor Richard H. Fallon, who teaches constitutional law.

Harvard Law School Professor John F. Manning ’82—who clerked for Scalia in 1988 and then argued cases in front of him as assistant to the solicitor general—said the Justice’s intellectual vitality was visible in oral argument as well.

“He’d come up with some pithy example that would capture the essence of a position. When it supported you, you were very happy and when it didn’t you were very unhappy.”

Besides delivering what are sometimes debilitating counter-arguments, Scalia also brings some levity to the bench.

A 2005 Boston University study determined that, of the Justices on the bench at the time, Scalia induced the most laughs during oral argument.