Page:Kerry v. Din.pdf/9

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Cite as: 576 U. S. ____ (2015)
7

Opinion of Scalia, J.

tradition, and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if [it was] sacrificed." Glucksberg, supra, at 720–721 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

Din describes the denial of Berashk's visa application as implicating, alternately, a "liberty interest in her mar­riage," Brief for Respondent 28, a "right of association with one’s spouse," id., at 18, "a liberty interest in being reunited with certain blood relatives," id., at 22, and "the liberty interest of a U. S. citizen under the Due Process Clause to be free from arbitrary restrictions on his right to live with his spouse," ibid. To be sure, this Court has at times indulged a propensity for grandiloquence when reviewing the sweep of implied rights, describing them so broadly that they would include not only the interests Din asserts but many others as well. For example: "Without doubt, [the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause] de­ notes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up chil­dren, [and] to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience" Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399 (1923). But this Court is not bound by dicta, especially dicta that have been repudiated by the holdings of our subsequent cases. And the actual holdings of the cases Din relies upon hardly establish the capacious right she now asserts.

Unlike the States in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967), Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U. S. 374 (1978), and Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78 (1987), the Federal Govern­ment here has not attempted to forbid a marriage. Although Din and the dissent borrow language from those cases invoking a fundamental right to marriage, they both implicitly concede that no such right has been infringed in this case. Din relies on the “associational interests in