Clarence Thomas

“ We see no reason to treat Equilon differently just because it chose to sell gasoline under two distinct brands at a single price. As a single entity, a joint venture, like any other firm, must have the discretion to determine the prices of the products that it sells, including the discretion to sell a product under two different brands at a single, unified price. If Equilon’s price unification policy is anticompetitive, then respondents should have challenged it pursuant to the rule of reason. ”

“ The fact that the Court categorically prohibits life-without-parole sentences for juvenile nonhomicide offenders in the face of an overwhelming legislative majority in favor of leaving that sentencing option available under certain cases simply illustrates how far beyond any cognizable constitutional principle the Court has reached to ensure that its own sense of morality and retributive justice pre-empts that of the people and their representatives. ”

“ By contrast, school choice programs that involve religious schools appear unconstitutional only to those who would twist the Fourteenth Amendment against itself by expansively incorporating the Establishment Clause. Converting the Fourteenth Amendment from a guarantee of opportunity to an obstacle against education reform distorts our constitutional values and disserves those in the greatest need. ”

“ Although the precise nature and use of punitive damages may have evolved over time, and the size and frequency of such awards may have increased, this Court's decisions make clear that the concept of "punitive damages" has a long pedigree in the law. "It is a well-established principle of the common law, that in actions of trespass and all actions on the case for torts, a jury may inflict what are called exemplary, punitive, or vindictive damages upon a defendant, having in view the enormity of his offense rather than the measure of compensation to the plaintiff." ”

“ Indeed, respecting the present conflict, the President has found that "the war against terrorism ushers in a new paradigm, one in which groups with broad, international reach commit horrific acts against innocent civilians, sometimes with the direct support of states. Our Nation recognizes that this new paradigm—ushered in not by us, but by terrorists—requires new thinking in the law of war." ”

“ We are not social engineers. The United States Constitution dictates that local governments cannot make decisions on the basis of race. Consequently, regardless of the perceived negative effects of racial imbalance, I will not defer to legislative majorities where the Constitution forbids it. It should escape no one that behind Justice Breyer's veil of judicial modesty hides an inflated role for the Federal Judiciary. The dissent's approach confers on judges the power to say what sorts of discrimination are benign and which are invidious. ”

“ One might be forgiven for failing to discern a workable principle that explains these wildly divergent outcomes. Such arbitrariness is the product of an Establishment Clause jurisprudence that does nothing to constrain judicial discretion, but instead asks, based on terms like "context" and "message," whether a hypothetical reasonable observer of a religious display could think that the government has made a law "respecting an establishment of religion." ”

“ Abortion is a unique act, in which a woman's exercise of control over her own body ends, depending on one's view, human life or potential human life. Nothing in our Federal Constitution deprives the people of this country of the right to determine whether the consequences of abortion to the fetus and to society outweigh the burden of an unwanted pregnancy on the mother. ”

“ Early commentators on the Constitution likewise interpreted the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause as referring to torturous punishments. One commentator viewed the Eighth Amendment as prohibiting "horrid modes of torture":
"The prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments, marks the improved spirit of the age, which would not tolerate the use of the rack or the stake, or any of those horrid modes of torture, devised by human ingenuity for the gratification of fiendish passion." ”

“ Were we to accept petitioner’s argument that the only protectable features are those that play absolutely no role in an article’s function, we would effectively abrogate the rule of Mazer and read "applied art" out of the statute.
Because we reject the view that a useful article must remain after the artistic feature has been imaginatively separated from the article, we necessarily abandon the distinction between "physical" and "conceptual" separability, which some courts and commentators have adopted based on the Copyright Act’s legislative history. ”

“ Staying in school and earning a degree generates real and tangible financial benefits, whereas failure to obtain even a high school degree essentially relegates students to a life of poverty and, all too often, of crime. [8] The failure to provide education to poor urban children perpetuates a vicious cycle of poverty, dependence, criminality, and alienation that continues for the remainder of their lives. If society cannot end racial discrimination, at least it can arm minorities with the education to defend themselves from some of discrimination’s effects. ”

“ We uphold an agency's definition of objectives so long as the objectives that the agency chooses are reasonable, and we uphold its discussion of alternatives so long as the alternatives are reasonable and the agency discusses them in reasonable detail.
We realize, as we stated before, that the word "reasonable" is not self-defining. Deference, however, does not mean dormancy, and the rule of reason does not give agencies license to fulfill their own prophecies, whatever the parochial impulses that drive them. Environmental impact statements take time and cost money. ”

“ The implications of the Court's novel theory that tax-collection injury alone justifies exercise of original jurisdiction are, in my view, both sweeping and troubling. An economic burden imposed by one State on another State's taxpayers will frequently affect the other State's fisc. (That will virtually always be the case, for example, with respect to income taxes; if State A takes actions that reduce the income of the taxpayers of State B, State B will collect less income-tax revenue.) ”

“ I join the opinion of the Court because it properly applies this doctrine, but I write separately to note that this doctrine may be inconsistent with the original meaning of the Fifth Amendment’s Self-Incrimination Clause. A substantial body of evidence suggests that the Fifth Amendment privilege protects against the compelled production not just of incriminating testimony, but of any incriminating evidence. In a future case, I would be willing to reconsider the scope and meaning of the Self-Incrimination Clause. ”

“ The fact that the Federal Government has the authority to imprison a person for the purpose of punishing him for a federal crime—sex-related or otherwise—does not provide the Government with the additional power to exercise indefinite civil control over that person. ”

“ It is difficult to see how the Court, when faced with "virtually identical" language in two provisions, can hold that a given interpretation is required by the "plain language" in one instance, but reject that same interpretation as "mechanical" and "untenable" in the other. After today's decision, Congress could employ the same terminology in two different attorney's fee statutes, but be quite uncertain as to whether the Court would adopt a " dual" standard (that is, reject the "mechanical" construction) , or apply an " evenhanded" rule (that is, adopt the "plain meaning") . ”

“ The United States, as amicus curiae, has suggested that the Confrontation Clause should apply only to those persons who provide in-court testimony or the functional equivalent, such as affidavits, depositions, or confessions that are made in contemplation of legal proceedings. This interpretation is in some ways more consistent with the text and history of the Clause than our current jurisprudence, and it is largely consistent with our cases. ”

“ Similarly, if the legislature, rather than creating grades of crimes, has provided for setting the punishment of a crime based on some fact—such as a fine that is proportional to the value of stolen goods—that fact is also an element. No multi-factor parsing of statutes, of the sort that we have attempted since McMillan, is necessary. One need only look to the kind, degree, or range of punishment to which the prosecution is by law entitled for a given set of facts. Each fact necessary for that entitlement is an element. ”

“ That a punishment is rarely imposed demonstrates nothing more than a general consensus that it should be just that—rarely imposed. It is not proof that the punishment is one the Nation abhors.
The Court nonetheless insists that the 26 States that authorize this penalty, but are not presently incarcerating a juvenile nonhomicide offender on a life-without-parole sentence, cannot be counted as approving its use. ”

“ As I discuss below, the only question after Casey is whether a ban on partial birth abortion without a health exception imposes an "undue burden" on a woman seeking an abortion, meaning that it creates a "substantial obstacle" for the woman. I assume that the Court does not discuss the health risks with respect to undue burden, and instead suggests that health risks are relevant to the necessity of a health exception, because a marginal increase in safety risk for some women is clearly not an undue burden within the meaning of Casey. ”

“ But a shovel, like a cheerleading uniform, even if displayed in an art gallery, is "an article having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information." ”

“ See Plessy, 163 U.S., at 559 (Harlan, J., dissenting) ("The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time.... But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens.... Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens") . ”

“ That the Constitution permits capital punishment in principle does not, of course, mean that all methods of execution are constitutional. In English and early colonial practice, the death penalty was not a uniform punishment, but rather a range of punishments, some of which the Framers likely regarded as cruel and unusual. Death by hanging was the most common mode of execution both before and after 1791, and there is no doubt that it remained a permissible punishment after enactment of the Eighth Amendment. ”

“ Chief Justice Marshall famously summarized Congress' authority under the Necessary and Proper Clause in McCulloch, which has stood for nearly 200 years as this Court's definitive interpretation of that text:
"Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional." ”

“ The Court has never explained the Confrontation Clause implications of a State's decision to adopt an exception not recognized at common law or one not recognized by a majority of the States. Our current jurisprudence suggests that, in order to satisfy the Sixth Amendment, the State would have to establish in each individual case that hearsay admitted pursuant to the newly created exception bears "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness," and would have to continue doing so until the exception became "firmly rooted" in the common law, if that is even possible under the Court's standard. ”

“ Today's decision is so obviously irreconcilable with Casey 's explication of what its undue-burden standard requires, let alone the Constitution, that it should be seen for what it is, a reinstitution of the pre-Webster abortion-on-demand era in which the mere invocation of "abortion rights" trumps any contrary societal interest. ”

“ But without education one can hardly exercise the civic, political, and personal freedoms conferred by the Fourteenth Amendment. Faced with a severe educational crisis, the State of Ohio enacted wide-ranging educational reform that allows voluntary participation of private and religious schools in educating poor urban children otherwise condemned to failing public schools. The program does not force any individual to submit to religious indoctrination or education. It simply gives parents a greater choice as to where and in what manner to educate their children. ”

“ Although there is arguably a danger of racial imbalance in schools in Seattle and Louisville, there is no danger of resegregation. No one contends that Seattle has established or that Louisville has reestablished a dual school system that separates students on the basis of race. The statistics cited in Appendix A to the dissent are not to the contrary. See post, at 869–872. At most, those statistics show a national trend toward classroom racial imbalance. However, racial imbalance without intentional state action to separate the races does not amount to segregation. ”

“ In short, I reject as both unprecedented and unworkable any standard that would require the courts to weigh the relative advantages and disadvantages of different methods of execution or of different procedures for implementing a given method of execution. To the extent that there is any comparative element to the inquiry, it should be limited to whether the challenged method inherently inflicts significantly more pain than traditional modes of execution such as hanging and the firing squad. ”

“ An artistic feature that would be eligible for copyright protection on its own cannot lose that protection simply because it was first created as a feature of the design of a useful article, even if it makes that article more useful. ”

“ In striking down this statute--which expresses a profound and legitimate respect for fetal life and which leaves unimpeded several other safe forms of abortion--the majority opinion gives the lie to the promise of Casey that regulations that do no more than "express profound respect for the life of the unborn are permitted, if they are not a substantial obstacle to the woman's exercise of the right to choose" whether or not to have an abortion. ”

“ In my view, to defer to one's preferred result is not to defer at all.↑ . The notion that a "democratic" interest qualifies as a compelling interest (or constitutes a part of a compelling interest) is proposed for the first time in today's dissent and has little basis in the Constitution or our precedent, which has narrowly restricted the interests that qualify as compelling. See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 351–354 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) . The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact the dissent's newly minted understanding of liberty. ”

“ According to the plurality: "The fact that a law which serves a valid purpose, one not designed to strike at the right itself, has the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate it." Id., at 874.
The Casey plurality therefore adopted the standard: "Only where state regulation imposes an undue burden on a woman's ability to make this decision does the power of the State reach into the heart of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause." ”

“ The dissent avoids reaching that conclusion by unquestioningly accepting the assertions of selected social scientists while completely ignoring the fact that those assertions are the subject of fervent debate. Ultimately, the dissent's entire analysis is corrupted by the considerations that lead it initially to question whether strict scrutiny should apply at all. What emerges is a version of "strict scrutiny" that combines hollow assurances of harmlessness with reflexive acceptance of conventional wisdom. When it comes to government race-based decisionmaking, the Constitution demands more. ”