Antonin Scalia Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Antonin Scalia:

With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them - with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the 'reasoned judgment' of a bare majority of this Court - we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.

The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means, today, not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.

Antonin Scalia

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

Antonin Scalia

To allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

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

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

A good, hard-hitting dissent keeps you honest.

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

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

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

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

If there's anything you absolutely hate, why, it must be unconstitutional. Or, if there's anything you absolutely have to have, it must be required by the Constitution. That's where we are. That is utterly mindless.

Antonin Scalia

I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better.

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

Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?

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

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don't want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

Antonin Scalia

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

Antonin Scalia

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

Antonin Scalia

Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly.

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

Being a good person begins with being a wise person. Then, when you follow your conscience, will you be headed in the right direction.

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

A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.

Antonin Scalia

Wringing your hands about states' rights, forget it. They're gone. Basically, the federal government can do whatever it wants. Who's going to protect the states? My court? Ha - we're feds!

Antonin Scalia

Indeed, follow your star if you want to head north and it's the North Star. But if you want to head north and it's Mars, you had better follow somebody else's star.

Antonin Scalia

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

Antonin Scalia

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

Antonin Scalia

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 come to see things as I do.

Antonin Scalia

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited... It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.

Antonin Scalia

If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.

Antonin Scalia

The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.

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

A man who has made no enemies is probably not a very good man.

Antonin Scalia

If I had to choose, I would always take the less dynamic, indeed even the lazy person who knows what's right than the zealot in the cause of error. He may move slower, but he's headed in the right direction.

Antonin Scalia

I love to argue. I've always loved to argue. And I love to point out the weaknesses of the opposing arguments. It may well be that I'm something of a shin kicker. It may well be that I'm something of a contrarian.

Antonin Scalia

It is not rational, never mind 'appropriate,' to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.

Antonin Scalia