On this episode of Our American Stories, before Antonin Scalia became the first Italian American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, he was "Nino," the only child of an Italian American family growing up in Queens. His father had arrived from Sicily as a teenager, speaking no English, and worked his way through school to become a professor of Romance languages. His mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants, became a schoolteacher. Together, they filled their son's childhood with books, high expectations, family, and a deeply rooted Catholic faith.

James Rosen, author of Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936–1986, shares how that upbringing helped shape the future justice.

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