FEBRUARY 2013

“There’s no question that the Voting Rights Act has done enormous good.” But he said that when Congress reauthorized it, it should have considered a new determination of which states should be covered. “Maybe the whole country should be covered. Or maybe certain parts of the country should be covered based on a formula that is grounded in up-to-date statistics, ” he said.

Justice Antonin Scalia spoke at length about the fact that the 2006 congressional vote to reauthorized the act was nearly unanimous.

“I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

“And I am fairly confident it will be re-enacted in perpetuity unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution,” he continued. “You have to show, when you are treating different states differently, that there’s a good reason for it. ”

Scalia said, “That’s the concern that those of us who have some questions about this statute have. It’s a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress

JUNE 2012

“But there has come to pass, and is with us today, the specter that Arizona and the States that support it predicted: A Federal Government that does not want to enforce the immigration laws as written, and leaves the States’ borders unprotected against immigrants whom those laws would exclude. So the issue is a stark one. Are the sovereign States at the mercy of the Federal Executive’s refusal to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws?

Scalia went on: “The president said at a news conference that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’ in light of Congress’s failure to pass the administration’s proposed revision of the Immigration Act,” Scalia, a Reagan appointee, wrote in his dissent. “Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.”

JUNE 2012

“America is at war with radical Islamists … (This ruling) will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed….The nation will live to regret what the court has done today.”

MARCH 2012

“Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.”

JAN. 2012

“I don’t care who is doing the speech — the more the merrier. People are not stupid. If they don’t like it, they’ll shut it off.”

JAN. 2011

“Sorry, to tell you that. … But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that’s fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don’t like the death penalty anymore, that’s fine. You want a right to abortion? There’s nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn’t mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.”

OCT. 2009

In response to the statement that Jews would not want their tombs marked with a Christian symbol, Scalia said, “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead. What would you have them erect? Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?”

“I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he continued. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

APRIL 2008

“It has nothing to do with how I decide cases,” Scalia replied. “My job is to interpret the Constitution accurately. And indeed, there are anti-abortion people who think that the Constitution requires a state to prohibit abortion. They say that the Equal Protection Clause requires that you treat a helpless human being that’s still in the womb the way you treat other human beings. I think that’s wrong. I think when the Constitution says that persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws, I think it clearly means walking-around persons. You don’t count pregnant women twice.”

FEB. 2008

“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?”

JUNE 2003

“Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

JUNE 1996

“The Court adopts the suggestion of the Court of Appeals that it is not possible for “one institution with autonomy, but with no authority over any other state institution, [to] give effect to a state policy of diversity among institutions … If it were impossible for individual human beings (or groups of human beings) to act autonomously in effective pursuit of a common goal, the game of soccer would not exist.”