“Is 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?”

[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.

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.

A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State”.

The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for often will.

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.

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.’

Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.

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.

The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.

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?

A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.

If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?

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.

Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?

Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It can do anything-it can stop the Vietnam War. It can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.

I cannot understand the logic of those who have been deliberately and mischievously propagating that the Constitution of Pakistan will not be based on Islamic Sharia. Islamic principles today are as much applicable to life as they were 1300 years ago.

If sexual relations between consenting adults are not part of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution, then American democracy is in trouble.

A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.

Either it is the fold of the infinite, or the constant folds [replis] of finitude which curve the outside and constitute the inside.

My constitution was destroyed long ago; now I am living under the bylaws.

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.

We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution . .