The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.
ANTONIN SCALIAAs 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.
More Antonin Scalia Quotes
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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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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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This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated.
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It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.
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People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
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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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[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.
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[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.
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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.
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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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The principal purpose of stare decisis is to protect reliance interest and further stability in the law.
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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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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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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.
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Why can’t the state accede to the public’s wishes?
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