I believe John Marshall said: "The power to tax is the power to destroy." McCullough v. Maryland

Three nominees:

"The utmost possible liberty to the individual, and the fullest possible protection to him and his property, is both the limitation and duty of government." Budd v. People, 143 U.S. 517, 551 (1892) (Brewer, J., dissenting).

"[T]he concept of privacy embodies the 'moral fact that a person belongs to himself and not others nor to society as a whole.'" Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians &Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 777, n. 5 (Stevens, J., concurring).

"[F]reedom of contract is, nevertheless, the general rule and restraint the exception, and the exercise of legislative authority to abridge it can be justified only by the existence of exceptional circumstances." Adkins v. Children's Hospital of the District of Columbia, 261 U.S. 525, 546 (1923)

Also from Thomas in Kelo: "Obliterating a provision of the Consitution, of course, guarantees that it will not be misapplied."

Sutherland in Blaisdell: "A provision of the Constitution, it is hardly necessary to say, does not admit of two distinctly opposite interpretations. It does not mean one thing at one time and an entirely different thing at another time."

Talking about junk mail:
"Although most of us, while murmuring an appropriate expletive, would have simply thrown away the mailer, and some might have stood on principle and filed an action in small claims court to obtain the calculator watch, Joshua's father did something a little different: he launched a $ 15 million lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court."

Harris v. Time, 191 Cal. App. 3d 449 (1987), judge unknown (read: I'm too lazy to log into westlaw.)

"At this stage - as in countless others in which the law profoundly affects the life of the individual - the lawyer is the essential medium through which the demands and commitments of the sovereign are communicated to the citizen." Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 415 (Stevens, J., concurring).

Justice Sutherland dissenting in Associated Press v. NLRB, 301 U.S. 103, 141:
For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vainshed liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time.

Justice Sutherland for the Court in Adkins v. Children's Hospital:
To sustain the individual freedom of action contemplated by the Constitution is not to strike down the common good, but to exalt it; for surely the good of society as a whole cannot be better served than by the preservation against arbitrary restraint of the liberties of its constituent members.

Justice Sutherland, dissenting in New State Ice v. Liebmann:
The principle is imbedded in our constitutional system that there are certain essentials of liberty with which the state is not entitled to dispense in the interest of experiments.

Justice Sutherland, dissenting in Blaisdell:
If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned.

Justice McReynolds, dissenting in Nebbia v. New York:
The Legislature cannot lawfully destroy guaranteed rights of one man with the prime purpose of enriching another, even if for the moment, this may seem advantageous to the public.

Justice McReynolds, dissenting in NLRB v. Jones &Laughlin:
Almost anything -- marriage, birth, death -- may in some fashion affect commerce.

Justice Rehnquist, dissenting in Garcia v. San Antonio Metro:
[A] principle that will, I am confident, in time again command the support of a majority of this Court.

Hey Jack, does that apply just to economic rights or to sodomy and abortions as well?

You need more Scalia in this thread. Here're two.

"It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government's power '(t)o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,' to decide What Is Golf."

PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin (dissenting)

"Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District."

Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches School District (concurring)

"When we tell the world that we expect all people, wherever they may be, to abide by our laws, we cannot in the same breath tell the world that our law enforcement officers need not do the same."

--Justice Brennan dissenting in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez.

"From what we have said so far, it follows that it is a constitutional liberty of the woman to have some freedom to terminate her pregnancy." Casey v. Planned Parenthood (Joint Opinion of O'Connor, Kennedy &Souter, JJ.)

I'm a trouble-maker. By the way, I never knew that there were such fans of Justice McReynolds -- should read up on who the guy was before you start quoting him.

My personal favorite comes from Justice Holmes in Buck v. Bell
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough"

There are limits to the extent to which a legislatively represented majority may conduct biological experiments at the expense of the dignity and personality and natural powers of a minority--even those who have been guilty of what the majority define as crimes.
-- Justice Jackson, concurring in Skinner v. Oklahoma

So can anyone explain to me what Senator Reid finds lacking in Justice Thomas' intellect.

Thomas seems the most committed defender of the constitution amongst the current supremes.

I guess for some, that kind of commitment lacks imagination.

(my apologies for not finding some appropriate judicial quote from the past)

One that's been on my mind a lot lately with the FEC hearings coming this week on political activity on the internet. The first sentence is the set-up; the second, the punchline:

"[I]f the goal of our First Amendment jurisprudence is the “individual dignity and choice” that arises from “putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of each of us”, then we should be especially vigilant in preventing content-based regulation of a medium that every minute allows individual citizens actually to make those decisions. Any content-based regulation of the Internet, no matter how benign the purpose, could burn the global village to roast the pig."

ACLU v Reno, 929 F.Supp. 824, 882 (E.D.Pa. 1996) (Dalzell, J.)

Re: Justice McReynolds, yeah I know all about him. Even odious human beings can do something good - I think there are examples of THAT all around us in the world.

Two suggestions, from very different ideological perspectives:

Scalia in Lawrence: "Do not believe them." (Referring to majority's suggestion that the ruling did not mean the end of morals legislation.)

Stevens in DeShaney: "Poor Joshua!"

Mr. Scales: That's Blackmun in Deshaney.

I nominate Judge Kozinski's Silveira dissent:

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed--where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees-- however improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."

From Scalia's dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld:
Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.

From the first Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (the first sentence would do, but I've included following sentences which develop its meaning):

Our Constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

It is so odious that nothing can be sufficient to support it but positive law.

Lord Mansfield, in Somersett v. Stewart, speaking of slavery.

"Separation of powers, a distinctively American political doctrine, profits from the advice authored by a distinctively American poet: Good fences make good neighbors."
Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm (1995) (Scalia, J.)

"But interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs."
Scalia, dissenting in Lee v. Weisman (1992)

But to portray Roe as the statesmanlike "settlement" of a divisive issue, a jurisprudential Peace of Westphalia that is worth preserving, is nothing less than Orwellian.

Justice Scalia dissenting in Casey

"The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." Stevens, dissenting, in Bush v. Gore.

I, too, vote for William Baude's choice Kozinski quote from Silveira, but I have a couple more of his from that same decision:

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us.

Expanding some (Constitutional provisions) to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.

As an inferior court, we may not tell the Supreme Court it was out to lunch when it last visited a constitutional provision.

Then there's Kleinfield's take on Silveira:

The panel's protection of what it calls the "people's right to bear arms" protects that "right" in the same fictional sense as the "people's" rights are protected in a "people's democratic republic."

That case is a veritable gold mine of quotable quotes.

Unfortunately, as it seems with most of the best-reasoned, best written jurisprudence, it comes from the dissenting side.

"If... she... weighs... the same as a duck,... she's made of wood."

-- Bedevere v. Witch (1975)

"How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that." Scalia, in his response to Justice Blackmun's strange tirade in a cert denial shortly before he retired, in which Blackmun relieved himself of the opinion that the death penalty is always unconstitutional. The "that" Scalia is referring to in the quote is a grisly rape/murder of a little girl.

Don't forget Justice Blackmun in Flood v. Kuhn:

Then there are the many names, celebrated for one reason or another, that have sparked the diamond and its environs and that have provided tinder for recaptured thrills, for reminiscence and comparisons, and for conversation and anticipation in-season and off-season: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Henry Chadwick, Eddie Collins, Lou Gehrig, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Hooper, Goose Goslin, Jackie Robinson, Honus Wagner, Joe McCarthy, John McGraw, Deacon Phillippe, Rube Marquard, Christy Mathewson, Tommy Leach, Big Ed Delahanty, Davy Jones, Germany Schaefer, King Kelly, Big Dan Brouthers, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Wee Willie Keeler, Big Ed Walsh, Jimmy Austin, Fred Snodgrass, Satchel Paige, Hugh Jennings, Fred Merkle, Iron Man McGinnity, Three-Finger Brown, Harry and Stan Coveleski, Connie Mack, Al Bridwell, Red Ruffing, Amos Rusie, Cy Young, Smokey Joe Wood, Chief Meyers, Chief Bender, Bill Klem, Hans Lobert, Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, Roy Campanella, Miller Huggins, Rube Bressler, Dazzy Vance, Edd Roush, Bill Wambsganss, Clark Griffith, Branch Rickey, Frank Chance, Cap Anson, Nap Lajoie, Sad Sam Jones, Bob O'Farrell, Lefty O'Doul, Bobby Veach, Willie Kamm, Heinie Groh, Lloyd and Paul Waner, Stuffy McInnis, Charles Comiskey, Roger Bresnahan, Bill Dickey, Zack Wheat, George Sisler, Charlie Gehringer, Eppa Rixey, Harry Heilmann, Fred Clarke, Dizzy Dean, Hank Greenberg, Pie Traynor, Rube Waddell, Bill Terry, Carl Hubbell, Old Hoss Radbourne, Moe Berg, Rabbit Maranville, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove.

Of course, in context, the next sentence is pretty good too:

The list seems endless.

Heh.

Cardozo's famous articulation of fiduciary duty in Meinhard v. Salmon:

Many forms of conduct permissible in a work-a-day world for those acting at arm's length are forbidden to those bound by fiduciary ties. A trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior...Only thus has the level of conduct for fiduciaries been kept at a level higher than that trodden by the crowd."

Here's a new one from today's ruling on the display of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky:

The Counties position just bucks common
sense: reasonable observers have reasonable memories,
and our precedents sensibly forbid an observer to turn a
blind eye to the context in which [the] policy arose.

Knock yourself out guys! T-shirts and mugs are at www.cafepress.com/dissentingop