“[N]ot once in the history of the American Republic has this Court ever suggested the death penalty is categorically impermissible. The reason is obvious: It is impossible to hold unconstitutional that which the Constitution explicitly contemplates. The Fifth Amendment provides that '[n]o person shal…”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.orgTagged: Supreme Court Decisions, Republic, Fifth Amendment, Death Penalty
“[Laws] prohibiting sodomy do not seem to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private... I do not know what 'acting in private' means; surely consensual sodomy, like heterosexual intercourse, is rarely performed on stage.”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.orgTagged: Supreme Court Decisions, Sodomy, private, Heterosexual, Intercourse
“Campaign promises are, by long democratic tradition, the least binding form of human commitment.”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.orgTagged: Campaign Promises, Supreme Court Decisions
“Since [Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S.], I have acquired new wisdom ...or, to put it more critically, have discarded old ignorance.”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.orgTagged: Supreme Court Decisions, Wisdom, Ignorance
“It is hard to consider women a 'discrete and insular minority', unable to employ the 'political processes ordinarily to be relied upon' when they constitute a majority of the electorate. And the suggestion that they are incapable of exerting that political power smacks of the same paternalism that t…”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.orgTagged: Supreme Court Decisions, Women, Minorities, Paternalism
“Avant-garde artistes such as respondents remain entirely free to épater 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…”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.orgTagged: Supreme Court Decisions, NEA, Bourgeoisie, épater les bourgeois, Tax
“The Court must be living in another world. Day by day, case by case, it is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.orgTagged: Supreme Court Decisions, Delusion, Constitution, Loss
“Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual….To pursue the concept of racial entitlement -…”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.orgTagged: Supreme Court Decisions, Constitution, Race Hatred, Affirmative Action