Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.
ANTONIN SCALIAIn the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.
More Antonin Scalia Quotes
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As 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.
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But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities.
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Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State”.
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Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.
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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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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?
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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.
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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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In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.
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Campaign promises are – by long democratic tradition – the least binding form of human commitment.
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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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It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.
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Why can’t the state accede to the public’s wishes?
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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.
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Devout Christians are destined to be regarded as fools in modern society. We are fools for Christ’s sake. We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world.
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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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A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.
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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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The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.
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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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Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.
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I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.
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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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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.
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You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations until they were all litigated out.
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Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?
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