Byron White Quotes

#1. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

Byron White

#2. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from the failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.

Byron White

#3. Maintaining order in the classrooms has never been easy and it is evident that the school setting requires some easing of the restrictions to which searches by public authorities are ordinarily subject.

Byron White

#4. The 1st Amendment protects the right to speak, not the right to spend.

Byron White

#5. Respondent would have us announce a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do.

Byron White

#6. The law is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the due process clause, the courts will be very busy indeed.

Byron White

#7. The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.

Byron White

#8. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government.

Byron White

#9. While the collateral consequences of drugs such as cocaine are indisputably severe, they are not unlike those which flow from the misuse of other, legal, substances.

Byron White

#10. The role of the judge is simply to decide cases.

Byron White

#11. We're the only branch of government that explains itself in writing every time it makes a decision.

Byron White

#12. When the whistle blows you have only a limited amount of time to do what you have to do. You either do it then or you don't do it at all.

Byron White

#13. To exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way affected by the prospect of the death penalty would be to deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which he or she is entitled under the law.

Byron White

#14. Sports constantly make demands on the participant for top performance, and they develop integrity, self-reliance and initiative. They teach you a lot about working in groups, without being unduly submerged in the group.

Byron White

#15. The risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence.

Byron White