Thousands pay respects to Scalia

WASHINGTON - Bidding farewell to their longtime colleague, the eight remaining Supreme Court justices joined family members, former law clerks, and members of the public Friday in paying their respects to Antonin Scalia in a tradition-laden, solemn day at the marble courthouse atop Capitol Hill.

The Rev. Paul Scalia, the justice's son and a Catholic priest, said traditional prayers at a private ceremony before thousands of people filed through the court's Great Hall, where Scalia's casket lay on a funeral bier first used after President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. "You have called your servant Antonin out of this world. Release him from the bonds of sin and welcome him into your presence," the sixth of the justice's nine children said.

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama visited the court Friday afternoon, bowing their heads near Scalia's casket and pausing in front of a portrait of the justices. During their brief stop at the court, the Obamas were greeted by Chief Justice John Roberts and met with another son of Scalia, Army Lt. Col. Matthew Scalia, and his family. Vice President Biden and his wife, Jill, were to attend Saturday's funeral Mass.

On Friday, 98 of Scalia's former law clerks lined the Supreme Court's steps as a police honor guard carried the casket into the building beneath the iconic words "Equal Justice Under Law" just after 9:30 a.m. on a cold, overcast day.

The justices stood near the casket in the same order in which they will sit on a reconfigured bench following Scalia's death last week in Texas. Roberts was between Justice Anthony Kennedy, the longest-serving member of the current court, and Justice Clarence Thomas.

A 2007 portrait of Scalia by artist Nelson Shanks was displayed nearby. In it, the justice is shown surrounded by images representing important moments and influences in his life, including a framed wedding photograph of his wife, Maureen. The extended Scalia family gathered around the widow inside the court.

Scalia's clerks also took 30-minute turns standing near the casket in groups of four, and planned to do so through the night until his body is taken from the court for his funeral on Saturday.

More than 3,000 people had passed by the casket as of late afternoon and court officials added an extra hour to accommodate the long lines that stretched more than three blocks in the early evening. At one point, the wait topped 31/2 hours, mainly because the public was not allowed in for a time because of the Obamas' visit.

Rhaleta Bernard from New York City's Queens borough, where Scalia grew up, had been visiting town with her husband, Kelvin. They changed their return bus tickets in order to pay their respects.

Outside the court, meanwhile, was a makeshift memorial that included not only flowers, but also jars of applesauce, a pile of fortune cookies, and paper bags, items left to remember some of the conservative justice's sharply worded dissents in recent cases.

Scalia had called Roberts' opinion for the court in last year's health care case "pure applesauce." He compared Kennedy's majority opinion declaring the right of same-sex couples to marry to the "mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie" and said he would hide his head in a paper bag if he ever joined such an opinion.