“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.”

Trivial facts are often the best hints to what is going on.

People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society. Those failures – joined with the similar failures of others – can readily have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

If it’s a situation in which the public is being given access, you can’t discriminate against the media and say, as a general matter, that the media don’t have access, because their access rights, of course, correspond with those of the public.

The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them.

An important function of the Supreme Court is to provide guidance, As a lower court judge, I appreciate clear guidance from the Supreme Court.

The States are separate and independent sovereigns. Sometimes they need to act like it.

People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society.

You don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you? As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.

You can’t fight for your rights if you don’t know what they are.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

I find that when I tell lawyer jokes to a mixed audience, the lawyers don’t think they’re funny and the non-lawyers don’t think they’re jokes.

The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.

Anytime you get nine people together, whether it’s at a party or it’s in the conference room of the Supreme Court, you do have to maintain some order, or it does kind of degenerate into squabbling pretty quickly.

I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge.

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.

Being an artist is this kind of occupation in which you have to make people care about your obsession.

What Leo does is so incredible that I have to be careful not to stand still watching him make his moves.

It just kills me to see people lose someone they love, so I want to do as much as I can: give money to doctors and hospitals; get nurses in there that care; put a smile on a little kid’s face.

That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain’s festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modem world. Both are fault lines in the raging international con�icts of today.

It only takes a minute to cause hurt but sometimes a lifetime to repair. Be careful with your words and actions.

Forget yesterday, live for today. Tomorrow will take care of itself.