The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.
ANTONIN SCALIAThe principal purpose of stare decisis is to protect reliance interest and further stability in the law.
More Antonin Scalia Quotes
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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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A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
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Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.
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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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This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated.
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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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[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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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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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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Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.
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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.
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On this day, when we’re celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage – to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it’s a good idea.
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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.
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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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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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