“[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.org
“[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.org
“Campaign promises are, by long democratic tradition, the least binding form of human commitment.”— Antonin Scalia, oyez.org
“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.org
“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 t…”— Antonin Scalia, pewforum.org
“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.org
“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.org
“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.org
“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.org
“As to the Court's invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school…”— Antonin Scalia, en.wikipedia.org
“The Constitution contains no right to abortion. It is not to be found in the longstanding traditions of our society, nor can it be logically deduced from the text of the Constitution - not, that is, without volunteering a judicial answer to the nonjusticiable question of when human life begins. Leav…”— Antonin Scalia, en.wikisource.org
“Life is too short to pursue every human act to its most remote consequences; "for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost" is a commentary on fate, not the statement of a major cause of action against a blacksmith.”— Antonin Scalia, law.cornell.edu
“The point at which life becomes 'worthless,' and the point at which the means necessary to preserve it become 'extraordinary' or 'inappropriate,' are neither set forth in the Constitution nor known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from…”— Antonin Scalia, en.wikipedia.org