A written constitution is needed to protect values AGAINST prevailing wisdom.
Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.
It is myopic to base sweeping change on the narrow experience of a few years.
This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.
The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.
Because values change, legislatures abolish the death penalty, permit same-sex marriage if they want, abolish laws against homosexual conduct. That’s how the change in a society occurs. Society doesn’t change through a Constitution.
There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America’s death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society.
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.
Being a good person begins with being a wise person. Then, when you follow your conscience, will you be headed in the right direction.
The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.
If I have brought any message today, it is this: 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 is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.
Burning the flag is a form of expression. Speech doesn’t just mean written words or oral words. It could be semaphore. And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea – I hate the government, the government is unjust, whatever.
Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.
The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means, today, not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.