Supreme Quotes

Endrew F. v. Douglas Co. Sch. Dist. Re-1

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: It says “some benefit,” but you’re -- you’re reading it as saying “some benefit,” and the other side is reading it as saying “some benefit,” and you know that -- And it makes a difference.

. . . .

JUSTICE KAGAN: Do you favor a standard with bite?
MR. KATYAL: It does have some bite. It does. We’re not trying to --
JUSTICE KAGAN: Would that be “some bite” or “some bite“?

Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman

JUSTICE BREYER: Then what’s the problem with saying -- you -- you don’t -- you’re too young to know what the OPA was.
MR. GUPTA: I think -- I think so, Justice Breyer.
JUSTICE BREYER: It’s called the Office of Price Administration. Ken Galbraith ran it for a while. And they would -- what they would do, he said is they’d go around and they’d smell what the right price was.

Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Hold on -- now, hold on. You’re saying that the -- the American people are too dumb to understand that if you say $10 plus a 20-cent surcharge, they can’t figure out that that’s $10.20.
MR. FEIGIN: And the second reason, Your Honor, I think addresses that concern directly.

Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman

JUSTICE ALITO: I mean, suppose some kids have a lemonade stand or they’re washing cars and they say a glass of lemonade, $1 and then somebody comes up to them and says I’d like to buy that with a credit card. It might happen today. I have -- I have never seen anybody younger than me buy anything with cash. But that would be a violation if they put the $1 there on the assumption that everybody is going to pay cash for their lemonade. These are tech savvy kids so they can -- could process a credit card purchase if they wanted to?
MR. WU: The statue has no exemption for kids selling lemonade.

Nelson v. Colorado

JUSTICE BREYER: Right. So what happens then? I mean, you -- I grant you have a tough side of this argument. It doesn’t seem very fair.

Lightfoot v. Cendant Mortgage Corp.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Your friend on the other side scares me when he says there are 60,000 cases that are going to be added to the Federal docket.
JUSTICE KENNEDY: Don’t tell us we’re not working hard enough.

NLRB v. SW. Gen., Inc.

Justice Breyer: I will also assume that for every chef salad there is a countervailing strawberry shortcake; all right? So — so everything balances out.

Zubik v. Burwell

Justice Alito: But, you know, in the long run we’re all dead.

Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt

Justice Ginsburg: Is there really any dispute that childbirth is a much riskier procedure than an early stage abortion?

Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt

Justice Kagan: You said that as the law is now, under your interpretation of it, Texas is allowed to set much, much higher medical standards, whether it has to do with the personnel or procedures or the facilities themselves, higher medical standards, including much higher medical standards for abortion facilities than for facilities that do any other kind of medical work, even much more risky medical work.
Mr. Keller: Correct, in this Court’s in Simopoulos.
Justice Kagan: And I guess I just want to know why would Texas do that?

Kingdomware Tech., Inc. v. United States

Chief Justice Roberts: I’m sorry. When you say you’re crushing the goals, that means you’re meeting them?

Markazi v. Peterson

Justice Scalia: I wrote it. I just don’t remember.

(Laughter.)

Justice Scalia: Do you know how many cases I’ve written?

Obergefell v. Hodges

Justice Scalia: I join The Chief Justice’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.

Obergefell v. Hodges

Justice Scalia: But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch.

United States v. Wong

Justice Scalia: You think man means women, right? Never mind.

Comptroller of the Treasury of MD v. Wynne

Justice Scalia: Right, you’re on the principle that life is not fair, right?
Mr. Brockman: Life is not fair. Maryland taxes are.

Holt v. Hobbs

Justice Scalia: Well, religious beliefs aren’t reasonable. I mean, religious beliefs are categorical. You know, it’s God tells you. It’s not a matter of being reasonable. God be reasonable? He’s supposed to have a full beard.

United States v. Wurie

Ms. Mizner: Well, this Court has espoused a warrant presumption...
Justice Scalia: Well, but that — that presumption is — is simply not — you don’t believe that presumption, do you?

Am. Trucking Ass'n, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles

Mr. Rosenthal: But we’re not—we’re not dealing with that hypothetical.
Justice Scalia: I know we’re not. That’s why it’s a hypothetical.

Ass'n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.

Justice Scalia: I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief.

Hollingsworth v. Perry

Justice Scalia: I’m curious, when -when did -- when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted? Sometimes -- some time after Baker, where we said it didn’t even raise a substantial Federal question? When -- when -- when did the law become this?
Mr. Olsen: When -- may I answer this in the form of a rhetorical question? When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools.

Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter

Justice Breyer: Use whatever word you want. Manifest disregard, stick to the law. Now, suppose the arbitrator had said this, it doesn’t say how to do it. I see how you do it, you get out a magic 8-ball. Now, we would strike that down because that is not relevant. But he didn’t say magic 8-ball. He said class. And there are many class arbitrations. So it isn’t quite magic 8-ball. Now, you explain to me --
Justice Scalia: What’s a magic 8-ball? I don’t know what you are talking about.
Justice Breyer: A magic 8-ball is you have -- that’s a little thing, it’s the -- it’s a non-sportsman’s equivalent of throwing darts.

On Homosexuality

Justice Scalia: If we cannot have moral feeling against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?

Dan's City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey

Justice Scalia: Well, let me tell you how we — it seems to me we’ve limited it in — in the Columbus case, Columbus v. Harrah’s Garage and Wrecker Services, Inc. We said that, “The clause — the clause’s limitation to motor carrier services with respect to the transportation of property massively limits the scope of preemption to include only laws, regulations, and other provisions that single out for special treatment motor carriers of property.” And here you’ve told us that this case doesn’t involve any law that singles them out for — for special treatment. To the contrary, it’s the general consumer protection law.
MR. BOUFFARD: Well -
JUSTICE SCALIA: So you want us to eat those words, they were wrong, or — or somehow you don’t come within them?
MR. BOUFFARD: Respectfully, Justice Scalia, I think those words came from your dissent in that case.
Justice Scalia: Ah. I forgot that.

Shelby Co. v. Holder

Justice Scalia: I think [the VRA is] very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. . . . Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes. . . .
Justice Sotomayor: Do you think that the right to vote is a racial entitlement in Section 5?

Maryland v. King

Justice Scalia: But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.

Texas v. Johnson

Justice Scalia: Will you give me an example where one... somebody desecrates the flag in order to show that he agrees with the policies of the United States.