People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
ANTONIN SCALIAIs it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited by the Constitution?
More Antonin Scalia Quotes
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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 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.
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The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the unalienable rights with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims ‘all Men are endowed by their Creator.’
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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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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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With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our nation’s historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.
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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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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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Why can’t the state accede to the public’s wishes?
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The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.
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The wise do not investigate such silliness.
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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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A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
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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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Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.
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