Antonin Scalia: Trending quotes (page 4)

College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 527 U.S. 666 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=98-149 (1999).
1990s

Support , Parting

“I'm not going to rip all that up. It's water over the dam. The people have gotten used to it. You know, that's what Stare Decisis is all about. In other words, I am an originalist. I am a textualist. I am not a nut.”

Antonin Scalia

On originalism vs. stare decisis: Manhattan Institute Lecture http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/wl1997.htm (17 November 1997).
1990s

People , Water

“The Court's reliance upon stare decisis can best be described as contrived. It insists upon the necessity of adhering not to all of Roe, but only to what it calls the 'central holding.' It seems to me that stare decisis ought to be applied even to the doctrine of stare decisis, and I confess never to have heard of this new, keep-what-you-want-and-throw-away-the-rest version.”

Antonin Scalia

On stare decisis (adhering to judicial precedent): Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=505&invol=833&friend=oyez (1992) (dissenting).
1990s

“A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”

Antonin Scalia

Dissenting, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015) ; decided June 26, 2015.
2010s

People , Democracy

“The Court's opinion serves up a freedom-destroying cocktail consisting of two parts patent falsity.”

Antonin Scalia

Navarette v. California, 134 S. Ct. 1683, 1697, 188 L. Ed. 2d 680 (2014).
2010s

Freedom , Parting

“The operation was a success, but the patient died.' What such a procedure is to medicine, the Court's opinion in this case is to law.”

Antonin Scalia

National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1998) (Scalia, concurring).
1990s

Law , Success

“Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.”

Antonin Scalia

Morrison v. Olsen, 487 U.S. 654, 699 (1988) (dissenting).
1980s

Wolf , Change , Clothes

“Avant-garde artistes such as respondents remain entirely free to é pater les bourgeois [shock the middle classes]; they are merely deprived of the additional satisfaction of having the bourgeoisie taxed to pay for it. It is preposterous to equate the denial of taxpayer subsidy with measures 'aimed at the suppression of dangerous ideas.”

Antonin Scalia

On tax-funded art: National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998) (concurring).
1990s

Idea

“Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges it has confronted are any worse now, or, alas, even much different, from what they ever were.”

Antonin Scalia

Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart graduation commencement speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSOOYx6wYM, .
2010s

“Abusive' (or 'hostile,' which in this context I take to mean the same thing) does not seem to me a very clear standard - and I do not think clarity is at all increased by adding the adverb objectively or by appealing to a reasonable person's notion of what the vague word means.”

Antonin Scalia

Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17 http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1168.ZC.html (1993) (concurring).
1990s

Hostility , Thinking , Personality

“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

Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1 (1989) (concurring in part and dissenting in part).
1980s

Justice , Law , Thinking , Time

“As I understand the various opinions today: One Justice holds that two-parent notification is unconstitutional (at least in present circumstances) without judicial bypass, but constitutional with bypass […]; four Justices would hold that two-parent notification is constitutional with or without bypass […]; four Justices would hold that two-parent notification is unconstitutional with or without bypass, though the four apply two different standards […]; six Justices hold that one-parent notification with bypass is constitutional, though for two different sets of reasons […]; and three Justices would hold that one-parent notification with bypass is unconstitutional […]. One will search in vain the document we are supposed to be construing for text that provides the basis for the argument over these distinctions and will find in our society’s tradition regarding abortion no hint that the distinctions are constitutionally relevant, much less any indication how a constitutional argument about them ought to be resolved. The random and unpredictable results of our consequently unchanneled individual views make it increasingly evident, Term after Term, that the tools for this job are not to be found in the lawyer’s – and hence not in the judges – workbox. I continue to dissent from this enterprise of devising an Abortion Code, and from the illusion that we have authority to do so.”

Antonin Scalia

On whether a state law may require notification of both parents before a minor can obtain an abortion; Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990, concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part), 497 U.S. 417 http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/497/417.html, No. 88-605 ; decided June 25, 1990
1990s

Justice , Search , Understanding , Parent

“I believe that our people’s traditional belief in the right of trial by jury is in perilous decline. That decline is bound to be confirmed, and indeed accelerated, by the repeated spectacle of a man’s going to his death because a judge found that an aggravating factor existed. We cannot preserve our veneration for the protection of the jury in criminal cases if we render ourselves callous to the need for that protection by regularly imposing the death penalty without it.”

Antonin Scalia

Ring v. Arizona (2006) (concurring).
2000s

Death , People , Penalty

“To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from? To be sure, you can't favor one denomination over another but can't favor religion over non-religion?”

Antonin Scalia

2010s

Truth , Religion

“As Justice Stevens explains, “ ‘objective evidence, though of great importance, [does] not wholly determine the controversy, for the Constitution contemplates that in the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.’ ” (quoting Atkins v. Virginia). “I have relied on my own experience in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty” Purer expression cannot be found of the principle of rule by judicial fiat. In the face of Justice Stevens’ experience, the experience of all others is, it appears, of little consequence. The experience of the state legislatures and the Congress—who retain the death penalty as a form of punishment—is dismissed as “the product of habit and inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process.” The experience of social scientists whose studies indicate that the death penalty deters crime is relegated to a footnote. The experience of fellow citizens who support the death penalty is described, with only the most thinly veiled condemnation, as stemming from a “thirst for vengeance.””

Antonin Scalia

It is Justice Stevens’ experience that reigns over all.
Baze v. Rees (2008) (concurring).
2000s

Death , Justice , Penalty , Quotes

“Textualism should not be confused with so-called strict constructionism, which is a degraded form of textualism that brings the whole philosophy into disrepute. I am not a strict constructionist, and no one ought to be--though better that, I suppose, than a nontextualist. A text should not be construed strictly, and it should not be construed leniently; it should be construed reasonably, to contain all that it fairly means.”

Antonin Scalia

Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation 23 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). http://web.archive.org/web/20060911103004/http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/scalia97.pdf (PDF).
1990s