Antonin Scalia Quotes - Page 3

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• Nowhere else in the Constitution does a "right" attributed to "the people" refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention "the people," the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset... The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms... The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it "shall not be infringed."

  Antonin Scalia

  Law, People, Political

  "District of Columbia v. Heller". United States Supreme Court, case 07-290, caselaw.findlaw.com. June 26, 2008.

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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.

  Antonin Scalia

  Rights, Government, Rooms

  "Supreme Court Justice Bans Media From Free Speech Event". www.govtech.com. March 19, 2003.

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

  Antonin Scalia

  States, Dissent, Ifs

  Antonin Scalia (2016). “Scalia's Court: A Legacy of Landmark Opinions and Dissents”, p.233, Regnery Publishing

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• 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.

  Antonin Scalia

  Leadership, War, Reality

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• It would also be strange to find in the midst of a catalog of the rights of individuals a provision securing to the states the right to maintain a designated "Militia." Dispassionate scholarship suggests quite strongly that the right of the people to keep and bear arms meant just that.

  Antonin Scalia

  Gun, Rights, People

  Antonin Scalia (1998). “A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law”, p.137, Princeton University Press

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• If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless.

  Antonin Scalia

  People, Looks, Useless

  "Scalia Slams 'Living Constitution' Theory", www.foxnews.com. March 14, 2005.

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

  Antonin Scalia

  World, Nine, Lawyer

  "Scalia Slams 'Living Constitution' Theory". www.foxnews.com. March 14, 2005.

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• Ever so subtly, without even alluding to the last obstacles preserved by earlier opinions that we now push out of our path, we effectively replace the goal of a discrimination-free society with the quite imcompatible goal of proportionate representation by race and by sex in the workplace.

  Antonin Scalia

  Sex, Race, Goal

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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?

  Antonin Scalia

  Blow, Faces, Bombs

  "Scalia accepts infliction of pain to get key information". articles.latimes.com. February 13, 2008.

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• This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated.

  Antonin Scalia

  Absurd

  Antonin Scalia, Paul I. Weizer (2004). “The Opinions of Justice Antonin Scalia: The Caustic Conservative”, Peter Lang Pub Incorporated

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• Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.

  Antonin Scalia

  Hippie, Mean, Thinking

  Antonin Scalia (2016). “Scalia's Court: A Legacy of Landmark Opinions and Dissents”, p.187, Regnery Publishing

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

  Antonin Scalia

  Rocks, Psychology, Decorating

  Antonin Scalia (2012). “Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice”, p.141, Regnery Publishing

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• Scalia said the court had pretty much signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, adding: Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means.

  Antonin Scalia

  Mean, Scary, Groups

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• The wise do not investigate such silliness.

  Antonin Scalia

  Wise, Scary, Silliness

  Antonin Scalia (2017). “Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived”, p.113, Crown Forum

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• Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.

  Antonin Scalia

  Burning, Bedroom, Bans

  "High court takes up Virginia cross-burning case" by William Mears, www.cnn.com. December 11, 2002.

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• Justice White's conclusion is perhaps correct, if one assumes that the task of a court of law is to plumb the intent of the particular Congress that enacted a particular provision. That methodology is not mine nor, I think, the one that courts have traditionally followed. It is our task, as I see it, not to enter the minds of the Members of Congress - who need have nothing in mind in order for their votes to be both lawful and effective - but rather to give fair and reasonable meaning to the text of the United States Code, adopted by various Congresses at various times.

  Antonin Scalia

  Thinking, Order, Law

  "Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1". supreme.justia.com. June 15, 1989.

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• It is a Constitution that morphs while you look at it like Plasticman.... That is contrary to our whole tradition, to in God we trust on the coins, to Thanksgiving proclamations, to (Congressional) chaplains, to tax exemption for places of worship, which has always existed in America.

  Antonin Scalia

  America, Scary, Looks

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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.

  Antonin Scalia

  Thinking, Ideas, Abortion

  "Scalia Slams 'Living Constitution' Theory". www.foxnews.com. March 14, 2005.

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• People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.

  Antonin Scalia

  Exercise, Rights, People

  "Justice Scalia speaks at Law School". www.chicagomaroon.com. May 09, 2003.

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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.

  Antonin Scalia

  Christian, Taken, Views

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

  Antonin Scalia

  Turntables, Bottom, Happens

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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.

  Antonin Scalia

  Yield, Government, Usual

  Antonin Scalia (2016). “Scalia's Court: A Legacy of Landmark Opinions and Dissents”, p.233, Regnery Publishing

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• Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis--that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.

  Antonin Scalia

  Military, War, Thinking

  Antonin Scalia (2016). “Scalia's Court: A Legacy of Landmark Opinions and Dissents”, p.131, Regnery Publishing

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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.

  Antonin Scalia

  Law, Important, Today

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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.

  Antonin Scalia

  People, Together, Purpose

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