Justice Antonin Scalia, who died over the weekend at 79, was the most colorful Supreme Court justice of recent memory. He liked to break open the thesaurus and harangue his colleagues with obscure insults, calling their work product “legalistic argle-bargle” in one memorable dissent. He wrote well and, in off-the-radar-opinions on politically obscure but important legal questions, he often out-analyzed his colleagues. On the bigger questions, however, his legacy is murky.

Scalia was a reliable vote on the right side of the spectrum, but he frequently found himself in dissent, despite serving on a court staffed mostly by Republican-appointed justices during his entire career. Conservatives will forever be grateful for his role in securing gun rights in District of Columbia v. Heller and blocking campaign finance reform in Citizens United and other major cases. But he failed to stop the same-sex marriage juggernaut (his Republican colleague Justice Anthony Kennedy defected) or Obamacare (Chief Justice John Roberts absconded), to eliminate abortion rights, or to defeat affirmative action. These were all issues close to his heart and of great importance to the conservative legal movement. These defeats will forever mar his legacy of success as a conservative champion.

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