60 quotes
But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.
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.
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.
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.
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. And it is addressed, in particular, to speech critical of the government.
I frankly doubt, moreover, whether the fiercely proud men who adopted our Fourth Amendment would have allowed themselves to be subjected, on mere suspicion of being armed and dangerous, to such indignity.
Since [Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S.], I have acquired new wisdom ...or, to put it more critically, have discarded old ignorance
Admitting fallibility: Concurring in Ring v. Arizona 536 U.S. 584 (2002)
Among the questions considered nonjusticiable is the definition of an impeachable offense. Whatever Congress says is an impeachable offense is an impeachable offense.
Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges it has confronted are any worse now, or, alas, even much different, from what they ever were.
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.
I am persuaded, therefore, that the Maryland procedure is virtually constitutional. Since it is not, however, actually constitutional, I would affirm the judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals reversing the judgment of conviction.
I don't think it's a living document, I think it's dead. More precisely, I think it's enduring. It doesn't change. I think that needs to be orthodoxy.
Today's extension of the Edwards prohibition is the latest stage of prophylaxis built upon prophylaxis, producing a veritable fairyland castle of imagined constitutional restriction upon law enforcement.
This case, involving legal requirements for the content and labeling of meat products such as frankfurters, affords a rare opportunity to explore simultaneously both parts of Bismarck's aphorism that 'No man should see how laws or sausages are made.'
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.
Forum at American University (2005)
What if I am an aficionado of bullfights and I think, contrary to the animal cruelty people, that they ennoble both beast and man. I would not be able to market videos showing people how exciting a bullfight.
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.
On affirmative action: Richmond v. Croson Co (1989)
I have been willing, in the case of civil statutes, to acknowledge a doctrine of scrivener's error that permits a court to give an unusual (though not unheard of) meaning to a word which, if given its normal meaning, would produce an absurd and arguably unconstitutional result.
In law school, I never understood [antitrust law]. I later found out, in reading the writings of those who now do understand it, that I should not have understood it because it did not make any sense then.
In my view, a right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the 'unalienable Rights' with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims 'all Men . . . are endowed by their Creator.'
On parental rights: Troxel v. Granville (2000)