Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative and most provocative member of the Supreme Court, died of apparent natural causes Saturday on a hunting trip in West Texas, Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed.

“He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues,” Roberts said in a statement. “His passing is a great loss to the Court and the country he so loyally served.”

Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.

According to a report, Scalia, an associate justice, arrived at the ranch Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body.

The U.S. Marshal Service, the Presidio County sheriff and the FBI were involved in the investigation.

His cause of death has not been officially released, but a federal official who asked not to be named said it appeared that Scalia died of natural causes.

CNN is reporting that the justice died in his sleep.

Scalia, the longest serving justice on the current court, was nominated in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan. He was the first Italian-American justice.

He has consistently been one of the court’s more conservative members and is often a lightning rod for controversy on the court.

He was in the court’s majority in the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, which effectively decided the presidential election for Republican George W. Bush.

“Get over it,” Scalia would famously say at speaking engagements in the ensuing years whenever the topic arose.

In 2008, Scalia said the Bush v. Gore decision was “so old by now.”

“The principal issue in the [2000 presidential election] case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn’t even close,” he said. “The vote was seven to two.”

An outspoken opponent of abortion, affirmative action and what he termed the “so-called homosexual agenda,” Scalia’s intellectual rigor, flamboyant style and eagerness to debate his detractors energized conservatives.

Scalia wrote for a broader audience than most of his colleagues. His opinions were read by lawyers and civilians for pleasure and instruction. He was an exceptional stylist who labored over his opinions and took pleasure in finding precisely the right word or phrase. In dissent, he took no prisoners; the author of a majority opinion could be confident that a Scalia dissent would not overlook any shortcomings.

In June, in his dissenting opinion on the Supreme Court’s King v. Burwell decision, he called his colleague’s opinions on the Affordable Care Act “pure applesauce,” and “jiggery-pokery.”

With his death the Supreme Court is now evenly split between Republican and Democrat appointees. President Barack Obama could nominate a replacement, however the Republican-controlled Senate may wait until after the presidential election. Democrats have not had a majority on the high court since Richard Nixon was president.

Though no formal statement had been made late Saturday, advisers to President Obama said he intends to nominate a replacement for Scalia.

CNN reported possible potential nominees included D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sri Srinivasan and Ninth Circuit Judge Paul Watford.

Condolences

Shortly after news of his death broke condolences started pouring in, including from President Barack Obama.

Former President George W. Bush said Scalia was a “brilliant jurist and an important American.”

“He was a towering figure and important judge on our nation’s highest court,” Bush said in a statement. “He brought intellect, good judgement, and wit to the bench and he will be missed by his colleagues and our country. Laura and I send our heartfelt sympathies and condolence to his wife Maureen, their nine children and the entire Scalia family.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called him a “man of God, a patriot, and an unwavering defender of the written Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

“He was the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution,” the statement said. “His fierce loyalty to the Constitution set an unmatched example, not just for judges and lawyers, but for all Americans. We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the Supreme Court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz called Scalia a “champion of our liberties and a stalwart defender of the Constitution.”

“Today our Nation mourns the loss of one of the greatest Justices in history ….he will go down as one of the few Justices who single-handedly changed the course of legal history, the statement said. “As liberals and conservatives alike would agree, through his powerful and persuasive opinions, Justice Scalia fundamentally changed how courts interpret the Constitution and statutes, returning the focus to the original meaning of the text after decades of judicial activism.”

Former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said Scalia will be “remembered as one of the smartest, funniest justices ever on the US Supreme Court.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the country lost “one of the finest jurists our country has known in my lifetime, a powerful voice for liberty and a passionate defender of the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution.”

Future cases

Scalia’s death comes just after the Supreme Court agreed to review whether President Barack Obama, acting without congressional approval, has the power to shield from deportation up to 5 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and make them eligible to work without fear of being rounded up.

The case is set to be argued in April and decided by late June, about a month before political parties gather for their nominating conventions.

And in November, the court announced it would review portions of Texas’ landmark 2013 abortion law, taking up the constitutionality of restrictions on doctors and facilities that have led more than half of the state’s abortion clinics to close. The Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in the case on March 2.

In the court rules 4-4 on a case before a replacement is confirmed, the decision would stand with the lower court.

Known for his sarcasm and combative style, Scalia was a polarizing force on the court and across the country. He called the 2015 decision that legalized gay marriage a “threat to American democracy,” said a 1992 abortion-rights opinion “cannot be taken seriously,” and predicted a 2008 ruling favoring Guantanamo Bay inmates “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

And late last year, critics called out the justice for remarks he made as the University of Texas at Austin defended in front of the Supreme Court its use of race as a factor in a small portion of admissions decisions.

“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school … a slower-track school where they do well,” Scalia said in December.

“Most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas,” he said, attributing the statement to a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case. “They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re … being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid was among those who blasted Scalia for his “racist ideas.”

‘Exceptional student’

Antonin Gregory Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey, to Salvatore Scalia and the former Catherine Panaro. He was their only child and was showered with attention from his parents and their siblings, none of whom had children of their own.

Scalia and his wife, the former Maureen McCarthy, had nine children.

“We were both devout Catholics,” Scalia told Joan Biskupic for her 2009 biography, “American Original.” “And being a devout Catholic means you have children when God gives them to you, and you raise them.”

Young Antonin was an exceptional student, graduating as valedictorian from Xavier High School in Manhattan, first in his class at Georgetown and magna cum laude at Harvard Law School.

He practiced law for six years in Cleveland before accepting a position teaching law at the University of Virginia in 1967. Four years later, he entered government service, first as general counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy and then as chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an executive branch agency that advises federal regulators.

In 1974, President Richard M. Nixon nominated him to be assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, an elite unit of the Justice Department that advises the executive branch. He was confirmed by the Senate not long after Nixon resigned. In 1977, Scalia returned to the legal academy, joining the law faculty at the University of Chicago.

Scalia turned down a seat on the federal appeals court in Chicago in the hope of being nominated instead to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, whose docket, location and prestige appealed to him. The first opening on the D.C. Circuit in the Reagan years went to another prominent conservative law professor, Robert H. Bork. But the second one, in 1982, went to Scalia.

In 1986, after Chief Justice Warren Burger announced his intention to retire, President Ronald Reagan nominated Scalia to the Supreme Court. Though his conservative views were well known, he was confirmed by the Senate by a 98-0 vote. He may have benefited from the fact that the liberal opposition was focused on the nomination of Justice William H. Rehnquist, who was already on the court, to succeed Burger as chief justice.

The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and Bloomberg News contributed to this report.