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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.

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

Brain Character Learning Mindset Physical Skills World
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
Rather 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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Credit Decision exchange Law Limitation Tax Writing
[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
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
A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Economics Law
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
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
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Death Morning Planning
Why can’t the state accede to the public’s wishes?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Public State Wish
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
I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Acceptance Argument Encouragement Myself Sexuality
[The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Benefit Consequence Cost Freedom Ignorance
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

Faith Goodness Judgement Reach Wrong
A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Majority Right Worth
[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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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