ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, October 8, 1996               TAG: 9610080088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-1  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
NOTE: Above 

JUDGE A REBEL FROM THE RIGHT?

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA broke with Court tradition by sporting a beard.

OK, so it isn't as revolutionary as the first woman on the court, but the beard that Justice Antonin Scalia was sporting at Monday's opening of the new Supreme Court term was indeed worthy as a historical note.

Not since Charles Evans Hughes left the high court, in 1941, has a justice worn a beard.

In the court, where precedent is observed, established or shattered, changes come glacially. A beard, a new chair, former Justice Tom Clark's bow tie, all such changes become the stuff of history.

Scalia's beard, noticed during the summer recess, was the subject of speculation in the closed little world of Supreme Court clerks, secretaries and other functionaries. Would he shave it off?

``It's the hottest question in the building,'' Maryellen Toughill, Scalia's longtime secretary, said when pressed last week for her prediction. ``I don't have a clue.''

On Monday, promptly at 10 a.m. the nine justices stepped from behind the backdrop curtain to open the October 1996 term.

Scalia was in full beard, not the mouth-framing mustache-chin adornment that Hughes wore. The Scalia hair, speckled black and white, reached from sideburn to sideburn.

The justices sit for a new portrait whenever a new member is appointed to the court, so it will be a while before Scalia's hirsuteness is recorded by the court's photographer.

Pictures reveal that the last time there was a Scalia-like adornment was that of Justice George Sutherland in the court of 1932.

LENGTH: Short :   44 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. Scalia is the first Supreme Court Justice to sport a
          beard since Charles Evans Hughes left the court in 1941. color.