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On this day, when we’re celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage – to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it’s a good idea.

Antonin Scalia

Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited by the Constitution?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Determination Easy Face Hide
Why can’t the state accede to the public’s wishes?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Public State Wish
One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Believe God Intellectual Reason Religion Sophistication
There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Crime Privacy Protection Realization
People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Better Exercise People Right Yourself
Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Bed Burn Room Sanity
It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Difficult Illusion Invention Maintain Oneself
In a big family the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it’s not perfect, that’s okay, there are a lot more coming along.
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Children Family Kind Perfection
For in order for capitalism to work — in order for it to produce a good and a stable society — the traditional Christian virtues are essential.
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Essential Order Production Society Virtue
The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for often will.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Convert Guarantee Process Race Sex Willing
The purpose of the Federalist Society was to bring together young people who had this skepticism about what they were being taught and to let them know that there were others who shared this skepticism.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Purpose Share Society Teaching
Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It can do anything-it can stop the Vietnam War. It can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Corruption Politics Power Togetherness War Willing
As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to ‘do what the people want,’ instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Agreement Confirmation Constitution Document Judgement Politics Thinking
[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Enjoyment Government Minimum Right Time Violence War Yourself
Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Act Case Lose Myself Principle Rule Save Short
But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Believe Hands Ourselves Soldier

On this day, when we’re celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage – to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it’s a good idea.

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On this day, when we’re celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage – to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it’s a good idea.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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