Justice Antonin Scalia's death is especially hard for a distinguished law professor at Southern Methodist University.
Scalia and Bryan A. Garner co-authored two books together. Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges was published in 2008. Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts was published in 2012.
"We would constantly push each other to try to make it sing and to try to make it better," Garner said. "We were trying to create beach reading for lawyers."
Garner said he and Scalia would spend countless hours together. He said Scalia treated him as an equal.
"We would read our paragraphs out loud and say, 'How can we say that better?' It made me feel better to edit him a little bit and make a couple of corrections," Garner joked. "When he was here in Dallas, we liked to do sort of regular guy type things."
Scalia visted Garner at his Dallas home three weeks ago. The pair had presentations in Hong Kong last week.
Scalia and Garner had just wrapped a second edition of their books.
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"I'm not sure how long it will take me to get it out," Garner said. "I have found it impossible to work or to really think about anything else over the last 24 hours since I got the news."
Garner first met Scalia in 2006 and became close friends over the past decade.
"He became one of my closest friends in the world," Garner said. "He was also very close to my wife. He married the two of us."
