Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative justices the court has seen, was also one of the most colorful.
Here are a few of his more famous quotes
- "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."
- "Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached."
- "A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
- "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."
- "What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?"
- "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."
- "We should start calling this law SCOTUScare."
- "Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, (the test) stalks our ... jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys."
- "If it were impossible for individual human beings (or groups of human begins) to act autonomously in effective pursuit of a common goal, the game of soccer would not exist."
- "Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution?"
- "Jiggery-pokery, pure applesauce."
- "Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a 'fundamental' aspect of golf."
Sources: BrainyQuote; Washington Post; New York Times;
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