Antonin Scalia: Trending quotes

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Antonin Scalia: 200 quotes27 likes

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

Speech at the University of Chicago Law School http://maroon.uchicago.edu/news/articles/2003/05/09/justice_scalia_speak.php (6 May 2003). 2000s

“I think it is up to the judge to say what the Constitution provided, even if what it provided is not the best answer, even if you think it should be amended. If that's what it says, that's what it says.”

Antonin Scalia

Forum at American University http://domino.american.edu/AU/media/mediarel.nsf/1D265343BDC2189785256B810071F238/1F2F7DC4757FD01E85256F890068E6E0?OpenDocument (2005). 2000s

“If to state this case is not to decide it, the law has departed further from the meaning of language than is appropriate for a government that is supposed to rule (and to be restrained) through the written word.”

Antonin Scalia

United States v. Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. 275 (1998) (Scalia, dissenting).
1990s

“My difficulty with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral one. I do not believe – and no one believed for 200 years – that the Constitution contains a right to abortion. And if a state were to permit abortion on demand, I would and could in good conscience vote against an attempt to invalidate that law, for the same reason that I vote against invalidation of laws that contradict Roe v. Wade; namely, simply because the Constitution gives the federal government and, hence, me no power over the matter.”

Antonin Scalia

Call for Reckoning http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/resources/transcript3.php3 - Pew Forum conference (25 January 2002). N.b. this speech was later modified into an article - God's Justice and Ours http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gods-justice-and-ours-32 which repeats much the same points. 2000s

“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

On civil rights and the Global War on Terrorism: Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) (dissenting).
2000s

“We Americans have a method for making the laws that are over us. We elect representatives to two Houses of Congress, each of which must enact the new law and present it for the approval of a President, whom we also elect. For over two decades now, unelected federal judges have been usurping this lawmaking power by converting what they regard as norms of international law into American law. Today's opinion approves that process in principle, though urging the lower courts to be more restrained. This Court seems incapable of admitting that some matters - any matters - are none of its business.”

Antonin Scalia

Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain et al., 542 U. S. 692 (2004) (concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
2000s

“Perhaps the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will attain the enduring status of the Social Security Act or the Taft-Hartley Act; perhaps not. But this Court’s two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years. The somersaults of statutory interpretation they have performed (“penalty” means tax, “further [Medicaid] payments to the State” means only incremental Medicaid payments to the State, “established by the State” means not established by the State) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence. And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”

Antonin Scalia

Dissenting, King v, Burwell, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) ; decided June 25, 2015.
2010s

“Evidently, the governing standard is to be what might be called the unfettered wisdom of a majority of this Court, revealed to an obedient people on a case-by-case basis.”

Antonin Scalia

On legislating from the bench: Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=487&invol=654 (1988) (dissenting). 1980s

“The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards—and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent. Words have no meaning if the views of less than 50 percent of death penalty States can constitute a national consensus. Our previous cases have required overwhelming opposition to a challenged practice, generally over a long period of time.”

Antonin Scalia

On executing minors: Roper v. Simmons (2005) (dissenting).
2000s

“Winning and losing, that's never been my objective. It's my hope that in the fullness of time, the majority of the court will is come to see things as I do.”

Antonin Scalia

NPR interview with Nina Totenberg ; as cited in Scalia: A Court of One https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1451611463, Bruce Allen Murphy, Simon & Schuster (2014), p. 374 2010s

“Those who believe that racial preferences can help to 'even the score' display, and reinforce, a manner of thinking about race that was the source of the injustice and that will, if it endures within our society, be the source of more injustice still.”

Antonin Scalia

On affirmative action: Richmond v. Croson Co. (1989) (concurring).
1980s

“You could fire a grapefruit out of a cannon over the best law schools in the country - and that includes Chicago - and not hit an originalist.”

Antonin Scalia

On modern teaching of law: Speech at University of Chicago Law School http://maroon.uchicago.edu/news/articles/2003/05/09/justice_scalia_speak.php, (6 May 2003). 2000s

“Judges who find Constitutional rights the Framers never intended take important issues out of the public space of democratic debate and suspend them in a sort of legal formaldehyde.”

Antonin Scalia

Speech at University of Vermont, 8 October 2004 http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=article.php&id=1389 2000s

“The Court's statement that it is 'tempting' to acknowledge the authoritativeness of tradition in order to 'curb the discretion of federal judges' is, of course, rhetoric rather than reality; no government official is 'tempted' to place restraints upon his own freedom of action, which is why Lord Acton did not say 'Power tends to purify.' The Court's temptation is in the quite opposite and more natural direction -- towards systematically eliminating checks upon its own power; and it succumbs.”

Antonin Scalia

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

“Among the questions considered nonjusticiable is the definition of an impeachable offense. Whatever Congress says is an impeachable offense is an impeachable offense.”

Antonin Scalia

2000s Source: The definition of high crimes and misdemeanors: Speech at Berne, Switzerland http://www.bafweb.com/60308scalia.wmv (2006).

“If I were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged.”

Antonin Scalia

And it is addressed, in particular, to speech critical of the government.
New York Times (July 19, 2012)
2010s

“The operation was a success, but the patient died.”

Antonin Scalia

What such a procedure is to medicine, the Court's opinion in this case is to law.
National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1998) (Scalia, concurring).
1990s

“In the 1970's and 1980's vaccines became, one might say, victims of their own success. They had been so effective in preventing infectious diseases that the public became much less alarmed at the threat of those diseases, and much more concerned with the risk of injury from the vaccines themselves.”

Antonin Scalia

Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, 562 U.S. 223 (2011), 226.
2010s

“I find it a sufficient embarrassment that our Establishment Clause jurisprudence regarding holiday displays has come to 'require[e] scrutiny more commonly associated with interior decorators than with the judiciary.'”

Antonin Scalia

But interior decorating is a rock hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.

Lee v. Weisman (1992, dissenting); decided June 24, 1992.
1990s

“It seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe, and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next? The Christian attitude is reflected in the words Robert Bolt’s play has Thomas More saying to the headsman: 'Friend, be not afraid of your office. You send me to God.'”

Antonin Scalia

For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence. God’s Justice and Ours https://web.archive.org/web/20120311230630/http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gods-justice-and-ours-32, 123 First Things 17. (May 2002). Adapted from remarks given at Pew Forum Conference on Religion, politics and death penalty. 2000s