221 Quotes by Antonin Scalia

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean?

It’s a long, uphill fight to get back to original orthodoxy. We have two ‘originalists’ on the Supreme Court. That’s something.

Jiggery-pokery.

To invoke alien law when it agrees with one’s own thinking, and ignore it otherwise, is not reasoned decisionmaking, but sophistry.

In 1905, the Supreme Court of the United States applied the rule to the country’s founding document: “The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now.

Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.

It would also be strange to find in the midst of a catalog of the rights of individuals a provision securing to the states the right to maintain a designated “Militia.” Dispassionate scholarship suggests quite strongly that the right of the people to keep and bear arms meant just that.

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.

Campaign promises are – by long democratic tradition – the least binding form of human commitment.