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[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

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Antonin Scalia
Age: 79 †
Born: 1936
Born: March 11
Died: 2016
Died: February 13
Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Professor
Trenton
New Jersey
Antonin Gregory Scalia
Scalia
Antonin G. Scalia
Individual
Scales
Government
Requires
Back
Constitution
Minimums
Without
Room
Violating
Way
Beyond
Wartime
Rooms
Minimum
Rights
Scale
Enjoy
Sets

More quotes by Antonin Scalia

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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.
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Why can't the state accede to the public's wishes?
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A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
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Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.
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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
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The wise do not investigate such silliness.
Antonin Scalia
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If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?
Antonin Scalia
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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?
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A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.
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The principal purpose of stare decisis is to protect reliance interest and further stability in the law.
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This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?
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I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.
Antonin Scalia
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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 by the Constitution?
Antonin Scalia
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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
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People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.
Antonin Scalia
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The attitude of people associating guns with nothing but crime, that is what has to be changed. I grew up at a time when people were not afraid of people with firearms.
Antonin Scalia
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A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
Antonin Scalia
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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
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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
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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