Antonin Scalia Quotes

It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.

How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties.

The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.

When awesome investigative power is entrusted to so many individuals, it is extremely important that they wield it with a proper regard for your constitutional rights, especially your right to privacy.

There is no fear exception to the 4th Amendment of the Constitution.

The privilege against self-incrimination is one of the great landmarks in man's struggle to make himself civilized... The Fifth is a lone sure rock in time of storm ... a symbol of the ultimate moral sense of the community, upholding the best in us.

While the machinery of law enforcement and indeed the nature of crime itself have changed dramatically since the Fourth Amendment became part of the Nation's fundamental law in 1791, what the Framers understood then remains true today - that the task of combating crime and convicting the guilty will in every era seem of such critical and pressing concern that we may be lured by the temptations of expediency into forsaking our commitment to protecting individual liberty and privacy.

Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts.

The right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.

The Fourth Amendment protects the privacy of us all - from ordinary citizens up to candidates for president. If we allow this precious right to be ignored when dealing with a presidential campaign, it can be ignored when dealing with the rest of us.

The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches.

The United States government can indict you on something, and now you've got to prove your innocence. And that's not the Constitution of the United States.

The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to corporations.

The last thing the Department of Homeland Security is about is infringing on anybody's constitutionally protected rights.

Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms.

What is the government doing or not doing in terms of tracking you, following you, investigating you? And if you're suspicionless, it should be none of the above.

To me, that means getting back to the point where our Constitution means that you don't tap people's phones and poke into their e-mail and you don't arrest people and keep them hidden for a year and a half without charging them.

Since we enacted the PATRIOT Act almost three years ago, there has been tremendous public debate about its breadth and implications on due process and privacy.

The U.S. Constitution protects our privacy from the prying eyes of government. It does not, however, protect us from the prying eyes of companies and corporations.

There is not a syllable in the Constitution that gives the federal government the right to spy on civilians.

The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights.

Law enforcement, however, in defeating the criminal, must maintain inviolate the historic liberties of the individual.

I am not yet ready to agree that America is so possessed with evil that we must level all constitutional barriers to give our civil authorities the tools to catch criminals.