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The principal purpose of stare decisis is to protect reliance interest and further stability in the law.

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
Stare
Reliance
Principal
Stability
Staring
Protect
Interest
Purpose

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Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.
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A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
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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.
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When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Bear in mind that brains and learning, like muscle and physical skill, are articles of commerce. They are bought and sold. You can hire them by the year or by the hour. The only thing in the world not for sale is character.
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Ever so subtly, without even alluding to the last obstacles preserved by earlier opinions that we now push out of our path, we effectively replace the goal of a discrimination-free society with the quite imcompatible goal of proportionate representation by race and by sex in the workplace.
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It's a long, uphill fight to get back to original orthodoxy. We have two 'originalists' on the Supreme Court. That's something.
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A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.
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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.
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One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned.
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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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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?
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[If critics of the Pledge of Allegiance persuaded the public it should be changed] then we could eliminate under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, that could be democratically done.
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Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.
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Devout Christians are destined to be regarded as fools in modern society. We are fools for Christ's sake. We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world.
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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.
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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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