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.

I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I've gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It's an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution. That is what I've meant when I've said that the Constitution is dead.

The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?

The first instinct of power is the retention of power, and under a Constitution that requires periodic elections, that is best achieved by the suppression of election-time speech,

If there was anybody that has been sort of the social glue of the court, it's been Sandra and I will miss her,