Every individual who participated in the redistricting process knew that incumbency protection was a critical factor in producing the bizarre lines. ... Many of the oddest twists and turns of the Texas districts would never have been created if the Legislature had not been so intent on protecting party and incumbents.

Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority.

I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.

The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.

The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.

Our love cannot be measured, it just is.

At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.