It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.
ANTONIN SCALIARather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act’s limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges.
More Antonin Scalia Quotes
-
-
The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.
ANTONIN SCALIA -
The wise do not investigate such silliness.
ANTONIN SCALIA -
I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion.
ANTONIN SCALIA -
Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.
ANTONIN SCALIA -
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 -
The attitude of people associating guns with nothing but crime, that is what has to be changed. I grew up at a time when people were not afraid of people with firearms.
ANTONIN SCALIA -
Bear in mind that brains and learning, like muscle and physical skill, are articles of commerce. They are bought and sold. You can hire them by the year or by the hour. The only thing in the world not for sale is character.
ANTONIN SCALIA -
People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
ANTONIN SCALIA -
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 -
The court’s job is to uphold the Constitution and you don’t call that off in times of crisis. Would the framers have allowed this practice?
ANTONIN SCALIA -
[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 -
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 -
Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?
ANTONIN SCALIA -
What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean?
ANTONIN SCALIA -
If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.
ANTONIN SCALIA