Antonin Scalia Quotes & Sayings

The wise do not investigate such silliness. — Antonin Scalia

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

You can't come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say 'Oh it's torture, and therefore it's no good.' Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the constitution? It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that. And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game. — Antonin Scalia

The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly. — Antonin Scalia

There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction. My concern is that in making life easier for ourselves we not appear to make it harder for the lower federal courts, imposing upon them the burden of regularly analyzing newly-discovered-evidence-of-innocence claims in capital cases (in which event such federal claims, it can confidently be predicted, will become routine and even repetitive). — Antonin Scalia

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

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 look at rights as if they were muscles - the more you exercise them, the better they get. — Antonin Scalia

If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: 'The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,' I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie. — Antonin Scalia

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. — Antonin Scalia

Campaign promises are - by long democratic tradition - the least binding form of human commitment. — Antonin Scalia

It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one. — Antonin Scalia

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

But I'm not pro death penalty. I - I'm just anti the notion that it is not a matter for democratic choice, that it has been taken away from the democratic choice of the people by a provision of the Constitution. — Antonin Scalia

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

Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change. — Antonin Scalia

It's absolutely clear that whatever cruel and unusual punishments may - may mean with regard to future things, such as death by injection or the electric chair, it's clear that - that the death penalty, in and of itself, is not considered cruel and unusual punishment. — Antonin Scalia

A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement. — Antonin Scalia

Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world. — Antonin Scalia

The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt. — Antonin Scalia

It is myopic to base sweeping change on the narrow experience of a few years. — Antonin Scalia

You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations ... until they were all litigated out. — Antonin Scalia

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

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

We should start calling this law SCOTUScare ... [T]his Court's two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years ... 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

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

[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

[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table ... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct. — Antonin Scalia

That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break. But you would have to be an idiot to believe that. The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things. — Antonin Scalia

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

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

One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned. — Antonin Scalia

We do Him [God] honor in our pledge of allegiance, in all our public ceremonies. There's nothing wrong with that. It is in the best of American traditions, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. I think we have to fight that tendency of the secularists to impose it on all of us through the Constitution. — Antonin Scalia

Why can't the state accede to the public's wishes? — Antonin Scalia

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

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. — Antonin Scalia

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. — Antonin Scalia

I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I've gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It's an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution. That is what I've meant when I've said that the Constitution is dead. — Antonin Scalia

I am something of a contrarian, I suppose. I feel less comfortable when everybody agrees with me. I say, 'I better reexamine my position!' I probably believe that the worst opinions in my court have been unanimous. Because there's nobody on the other side pointing out all the flaws. — Antonin Scalia

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

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

If you are sentenced to torture for a crime, yes, that is a cruel punishment. But the mere fact that somebody is tortured is - is unlawful under - under our statutes, but the Constitution happens not to address it, just as it does not address a lot of other horrible things. — Antonin Scalia

A law can be both economic folly and constitutional. — Antonin Scalia

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

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well. — Antonin Scalia

The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie. [Referring to pronouncement by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Obergefell v. Hodges: "The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity."] — Antonin Scalia

[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

This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated. — Antonin Scalia

[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

My view is regardless of whether you think prohibiting abortion is good or whether you think prohibiting abortion is bad, regardless of how you come out on that, my only point is the Constitution does not say anything about it. It leaves it up to democratic choice. — Antonin Scalia

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

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

It's not up to the courts to invent new minorities that get special protections. — Antonin Scalia

I do accept that, with - with respect to those vague terms in the Constitution such as equal protection of the laws, due process of law, cruel and unusual punishments. I fully accept that those things have to apply to new phenomena that didn't exist at the time. — Antonin Scalia

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

If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things? — Antonin Scalia

It's a long, uphill fight to get back to original orthodoxy. We have two 'originalists' on the Supreme Court. That's something. — Antonin Scalia

Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize. — Antonin Scalia

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

When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted? — Antonin Scalia

To many Americans, everything from the Easter morning to the Ascension had to be made up by the groveling enthusiasts as part of their plan to get themselves martyred. — Antonin Scalia

The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the unalienable rights with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims all men [and women] are endowed by their creator. — Antonin Scalia

Originalism is sort of subspecies of textualism. Textualism means you are governed by the text. That's the only thing that is relevant to your decision, not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute. — Antonin Scalia

By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. — Antonin Scalia

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

Having had the good fortune to serve beside her on both courts, I can attest that her opinions are always thoroughly considered, always carefully crafted and almost always correct (which is to say we sometimes disagree). That much is apparent for all to see. What only her colleagues know is that her suggestions improve the opinions the rest of us write, and that she is a source of collegiality and good judgment in all our work. — Antonin Scalia

In 1905, the Supreme Court of the United States applied the rule to the country's founding document: The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now. — Antonin Scalia

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

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. — Antonin Scalia

In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American. — Antonin Scalia

I would not like to be replaced by someone who immediately sets about undoing what I've tried to do for 25-26 years. — Antonin Scalia

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

I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion. — Antonin Scalia

God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools ... and He has not been disappointed. — Antonin Scalia

Burning the flag is a form of expression. Speech doesn't just mean written words or oral words. It could be semaphore. And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea - I hate the government, the government is unjust, whatever. — Antonin Scalia

Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive. — Antonin Scalia

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean? — Antonin Scalia

The Court's decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery. That philosophy ignores the American people's decision to give Congress '[a]ll legislative Powers' enumerated in the Constitution. They made Congress, not this Court, responsible for both making laws and mending them. — Antonin Scalia

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

It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction. — Antonin Scalia

I try to be an honest originalist! I will take the bitter with the sweet! — Antonin Scalia

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

I am glad that I am not raising kids today. And I'm rather pessimistic that my grandchildren will enjoy the great society that I've enjoyed in my lifetime. I really think it's coarsened. It's coarsened in so many ways. One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You can't go to a movie - or watch a television show for that matter - without hearing the constant use of the F-word - including, you know, ladies using it. People that I know don't talk like that! — Antonin Scalia

Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs. — Antonin Scalia

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 under the Constitution? — Antonin Scalia

Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act's limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges. — Antonin Scalia

The choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply the laws and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course if he feels strongly enough he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penaltyand if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do. — Antonin Scalia

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

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

More importantly, the Court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men. That means we are governed by the terms of our laws, not by the unenacted will of our lawmakers. 'If Congress enacted into law something different from what it intended, then it should amend the statute to conform to its intent.' In the meantime, this Court 'has no roving license ... to disregard clear language simply on the view that ... Congress 'must have intended' something broader. — Antonin Scalia

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

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

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

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry
out a death sentence properly reached. — Antonin Scalia

Tyrannies have long lists of rights. What they do not have is structural restraints on the power of government. — Antonin Scalia

The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people. — Antonin Scalia

And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that's stupid is not unconstitutional. — Antonin Scalia

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. — Antonin Scalia

Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom. — Antonin Scalia

I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged. — Antonin Scalia