Daily Inspiration Quote by Antonin Scalia

Scalia’s line is a scalpel disguised as a joke: it slices into the genteel fantasy that “moderation” in judging is a neutral virtue rather than a rhetorical costume. By defining “moderate interpretation” as the midpoint between the text’s actual meaning and the interpreter’s preferred outcome, he turns the centrist posture into a confession of bias. The laugh lands because it weaponizes a common legal affect - reasonable, balanced, pragmatic - and suggests it often functions as laundering desire through the language of restraint.

The specific intent is polemical. Scalia is defending textualism and originalism against the idea that courts should split the difference between competing values, social pressures, or moral intuitions. In his world, the judge’s job is not to be “moderate” but to be faithful: to the enacted words, to the Constitution’s constraints, to the limiting principle that keeps unelected power from becoming a roving commission.

The subtext is sharper: calls for moderation frequently arrive when someone dislikes what the law, read straight, requires. “Moderate” becomes a polite demand that the judge bend - not too much, just enough to feel humane. Scalia’s punchline exposes the psychological mechanism: we smuggle in what we’d like, then pretend the compromise is virtue.

Context matters. Scalia operated in an era when the Supreme Court was increasingly asked to settle cultural questions legislatures couldn’t or wouldn’t resolve. His quip is a warning flare: once interpretation becomes calibrated to desired outcomes, it’s not interpretation anymore; it’s governance with a citation format.