impressedI pause at this point to call attention to the fact that, in my view, the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply those laws, and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course, if he feels strongly enough, he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty, and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do.
[...]
The death penalty is undoubtedly wrong unless one accords to the state a scope of moral action that goes beyond what is permitted to the individual. In my view, the major impetus behind modern aversion to the death penalty is the equation of private morality with governmental morality. That is a predictable, though I believe erroneous and regrettable, reaction to modern democratic self-government.
[...]
Of course, those who deny the authority of a government to exact vengeance are not entirely logical. Many crimes - for example, domestic murder in the heat of passion - are neither deterred by punishment meted out to others, nor likely to be committed a second time by the same offender, yet capital punishment opponents do not object to sending such an offender to prison, perhaps for life, because he deserves punishment, because it is just.
[...]
As I made clear in my remarks, I will strike down Roe v. Wade, but I will also strike down a law that is the opposite of Roe v. Wade. You know, both sides in that debate want the Supreme Court to decide the matter for them. One wants no state to be able to prohibit abortion and the other one wants every state to have to prohibit abortion, and they're both wrong, not because of my religious views but because that's how I read the Constitution. It says nothing on the subject, whatever my religious views on the subject are, and I have religious views on the subject. But they have nothing whatever to do with my job.