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A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.

Antonin Scalia

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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Attitude Change Growth Myself People Weapon
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Purpose Share Society Teaching
[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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Day Fundamental Important Meaning Original
Why can’t the state accede to the public’s wishes?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Public State Wish
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Essential Order Production Society Virtue
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Belief Honesty Regard Simplicity Traditional
[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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Enjoyment Government Minimum Right Time Violence War Yourself
Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Busy Case Constitution Country Day Recognition
A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Close Search Table
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Convert Guarantee Process Race Sex Willing
[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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Change Democracy Elimination God
Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Law World Yourself
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Children Family Kind Perfection
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Absolution Break Criminal Death State
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Believe Hands Ourselves Soldier
This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Execution Pain Surgery
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Agreement Confirmation Constitution Document Judgement Politics Thinking
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?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Frame Job Practice Time
Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Allow Constitution Discrimination Rule Sex
A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Constitution Economics Law
Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Bed Burn Room Sanity
What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean?
ANTONIN SCALIA

Literature Meaning Yourself
The principal purpose of stare decisis is to protect reliance interest and further stability in the law.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Interest Law Principle Protection Stability State
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Citizenship Demand Goodness Ideas Judgement Society Yourself
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Act Case Lose Myself Principle Rule Save Short
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.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Faith Goodness Judgement Reach Wrong
[The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored.
ANTONIN SCALIA

Benefit Consequence Cost Freedom Ignorance

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.

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A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.

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