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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

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 SCALIA

Ambience Contradiction Model Respect Statement
A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Economics Law
[International law] doesn’t show what the Constitution originally meant, and it doesn’t show what is fundamentally important to Americans today. It shows what’s fundamentally important to somebody else today.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Day Fundamental Important Meaning Original
Campaign promises are – by long democratic tradition – the least binding form of human commitment.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Commitment Democracy Human Promise Tradition
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

Constitution Frame Job Practice Time
If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That’s flexibility.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Adoption Citizenship Constitution Flexibility Live Yourself
The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Change Democracy Freedom Law Right Speech System Virtue
[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
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

Celebration Constitution Day Faith Goodness Ideas Invention Restriction
To be honest about it, that is the view of Christians taken by modern society. Surely those who adhere to all or most of these traditional Christian beliefs are to be regarded as simpleminded.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Belief Honesty Regard Simplicity Traditional
Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Freedom Intimacy Marriage Oneself Spirituality
[If critics of the Pledge of Allegiance persuaded the public it should be changed] then we could eliminate under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, that could be democratically done.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Change Democracy Elimination God
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

Absolution Break Criminal Death State
Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Change Meaning Word
What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Literature Meaning Yourself
This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Execution Pain Surgery

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.

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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.

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