We have differing views on law, politics and religion. But I have yet to meet a Scalia clerk who was not grateful to the man who taught us, shaped us, and launched us into our lives in the law. Justice Scalia's passing leaves a giant void in the court and in the intellectual discourse over the law.

I am often asked what it was like to be a woman clerking for Justice Scalia. 'Much like being a man clerking for him' is my easy answer. Justice Scalia believed in one simple principle: That law came to the court as an 'is,' not an 'ought.'

When I first met Antonin Scalia, I was a small child with one brown ponytail atop my head. Which is odd, because I was a full-grown woman, and my hair was short and blond. Still, sitting on the black leather sofa in his chambers, I remember shrinking.

Denying the president a constitutional voice is the real threat to our system of separated powers.