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 SCALIAI even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.
More Antonin Scalia Quotes
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Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.
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[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.
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[The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored.
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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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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.
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Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.
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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?
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One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned.
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In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.
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Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t.
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The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.
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Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?
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A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
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This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?
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If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?
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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.
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You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations until they were all litigated out.
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To many Americans, everything from the Easter morning to the Ascension had to be made up by the groveling enthusiasts as part of their plan to get themselves martyred.
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Why can’t the state accede to the public’s wishes?
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A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
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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.
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Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.
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A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.
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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.
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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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Campaign promises are – by long democratic tradition – the least binding form of human commitment.
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