Judicial Quotes

#1. Now, how do you explain Obama's claim, that he can kill American citizens without due process? Well, he has his attorney general get up and say, "Well, it doesn't say in the constitution judicial process. It just says due process." Now that's a lawyerly diversion from the truth.

Ray McGovern

#2. Apparently a great many people have forgotten that the framers of our Constitution went to such great effort to create an independent judicial branch that would not be subject to retaliation by either the executive branch or the legislative branch because of some decision made by those judges.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#3. To say that we have to surrender to judicial supremacy is to do what Jefferson warned against, which is, in essence, surrender to judicial tyranny.

Mike Huckabee

#4. In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.

Abraham Lincoln

#5. It wouldn't be fair to say that conservatives cherish property the way liberals cherish equality. But it would be fair to say that the takings clause is the conservatives' recipe for judicial activism just as they say liberals have misused the equal protection clause.

Michael Kinsley

#6. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

Tony Judt

#7. It would degrade our country and our judicial system to permit our courts to be bullied, insulted and humiliated and the orderly progress thwarted and obstructed by defendants brought before them charged with crimes.

Hugo Black

#8. Of course, conservatives always claim to be against judicial activism.

Michael Kinsley

#9. There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.

Edmund Burke

#10. The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.

Edwin Percy Whipple

#11. Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#12. What's brilliant about the United States system of government is separation of power. Not only the executive, legislative, judicial branches, but also the independence of the military from civilians, an independent media and press, an independent central bank.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

#13. The Supreme Court would benefit from the addition of a justice who has real experience as a practicing lawyer. The current justices have all been chosen from the lower federal courts. A nominee with relevant non-judicial experience would bring a different and useful perspective to the court.

Harry Reid

#14. If [the legislature] will positively enact a thing to be done, the judges are not at liberty to reject it, for that were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which would be subversive of all government.

William Blackstone

#15. I do not apologize for these terms or, more generally, for discussing judicial thinking in a vocabulary alien to most judges and lawyers. Judicial behavior cannot be understood in the vocabulary that judges themselves use, sometimes mischievously. (11)

Richard A. Posner

#16. The outstanding examples are still Cardozo's Nature of the Judicial Process18

Richard A. Posner

#17. That's the whole point of ... of prosecutorial discretion in the judicial system. It's finding a just outcome in an individual case.

Andrew Thomas

#18. It is profoundly troubling when you have Supreme Court justices not following their judicial oath. And taking the role of policy makers and legislators, rather than being judges.

Ted Cruz

#19. The matter came up for judicial investigation, but as might have been expected, the white people concluded it was unnecessary to wait the result of the investigation - that it was preferable to hang the accused first and try him afterward.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

#20. I regret that some on the extreme right have been so critical of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and have adamantly opposed the naming of a successor who shares her judicial philosophy and qualities. And their criticism actually reflects poorly upon them.

Patrick Leahy

#21. I don't trust Santa Barbara as far as I can spit. I am afraid that if I went back there, it's possible that I could be run through their system, their judicial system, and wind up in some county jail where I could be killed and I'm not gonna take that chance.

Randy Quaid

#22. Now judicial review, beloved by conservatives, can, of course, fulfill the excellent function of declaring government interventions and tyrannies unconstitutional. But it can also validate and legitimize the government in the eyes of the people by declaring these actions valid and constitutional.

Murray Rothbard

#23. I believe [filibustering judicial nominees] is in violation of the Constitution

Saxby Chambliss

#24. True freedom requires the rule of law and justice, and a judicial system in which the rights of some are not secured by the denial of rights to others.

Jonathan Sacks

#25. JAG is an acronym for the Judge Advocate General, which is the judicial system of the military.

Catherine Bell

#26. Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath.

John Roberts

#27. In Britain, a 'block list' of harmful Web sites, used by all the major Internet Service Providers, is maintained by a private foundation with little transparency and no judicial or government oversight of the list.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#28. The stopping of the Judicial courts, had been blended, in the minds of some people, with the redress of grievances considered only as a mode of awakening the attention of the legislature.

George Richards Minot

#29. [The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

Alexander Hamilton

#30. The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left.

Robert Bork

#31. We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will ... authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional.

Arlen Specter

#32. Severability is an important concept in the context of the relations between this Court and Parliament; like 'reading down', it is an instrument of judicial restraint which reduces the danger of producing an overbroad judicial reaction to overbroad legislation.

Albie Sachs

#33. Last year, I was proud to be an original co-sponsor of legislation that would increase federal judges' salaries by more than 40 percent. It also built in a cost of living adjustment, so the Judicial Branch would not be dependent on the Legislative Branch for increases each year.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

#34. Judicial review has been a part of our democracy in this constitutional government for over 200 years.

Ron Kind

#35. We must use a judicial, rather than a political, standard to evaluate [a nominee's] fitness for the Supreme Court. That standard must be based on the fundamental principle that judges interpret and apply but do not make law.

Orrin Hatch

#36. It is the union of independence and dependence of these branches - legislative, executive and judicial - and of the governmental functions possessed by each of them, that constitutes the marvellous genius of this unrivalled document.

J. Reuben Clark

#37. When justices seize authority from the other branches of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, under the rubric of judicial review, that's tyranny.

Mark Levin

#38. This story of benign judicial neglect of Nazis and collaborators forms a striking contrast with the systematic repression of the Greek Left, which lasted for over two decades.

Mark Mazower

#39. One of the litmus tests for judicial conservatism is the idea of judicial restraint - that courts should give substantial deference to the decisions of the political process. When Congress and the president enact a law, conservatives generally say, judges should avoid 'legislating from the bench.'

Jeff Greenfield

#40. People can be committed to a mental institution only after judicial hearing, but people are committed to schools beyond the reach of Habeas Corpus.

Martin Mayer

#41. The judge is forced for the most part to reach his audience through the medium of the press whose reporting of judicial decisions is all too often inaccurate and superficial.

Irving R. Kaufman

#42. Out of control judicial activism threatens traditional marriage in America.

Ernest Istook

#43. For most of the last thirty years the judicial system has been fairly consistent: once they leave your body, you do not own your tissue, organs, or bodily fluids or any of the revenue they might generate for a biotech company, a university, or anyone else.

Misha Angrist

#44. Historically, the judicial branch has often been the sole protector of the rights of minority groups against the will of the popular majority.

Diane Watson

#45. I would never filibuster any President's judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote.

Saxby Chambliss

#46. There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#47. The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

#48. Empathy is a virtue, but it should not be a guiding judicial principle.

Gary Bauer

#49. Monitor, transparently, and enforce the separation of Democracy powers: Legislative; Executive; Judicial

Miguel Reynolds Brandao

#50. The supremacy of Parliament and the embedding of property rights in Common Law put political power in the hands of men anxious to exploit the new economic opportunities and provided the framework for a judicial system to protect and encourage productive economic activity

Douglass North

#51. Continued reliance on preemption analysis suppresses judicial attention to the discrimination and equality concerns that should be motivating courts' consideration of subfederal immigration regulations.

Pratheepan Gulasekaram

#52. I do not think that we should select judges based on a particular philosophy as opposed to temperament, commitment to judicial neutrality and commitment to other more constant values as to which there is general consensus.

Anthony Kennedy

#53. We must apply a judicial, not a political, standard to this record. Asking a judicial nominee whose side you will be on in future cases is a political standard.

Orrin Hatch

#54. As the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the United States are co-ordinate, and each equally bound to support the Constitution, it follows that each must in the exercise of its functions be guided by the text of the Constitution according to its own interpretation of it.

James Madison

#55. We should evaluate judges and judicial nominees based on the general process for applying the law to any legal disputes, not on the specific result in a particular case or dispute.

Orrin Hatch

#56. They lacked the values, myths, judicial apparatus and sociopolitical structures that took centuries to form and mature in the West and which could not be copied and internalised rapidly. France

Yuval Noah Harari

#57. States kill when they apply the death penalty, when they send their people to war, or when they carry out extra-judicial or summary executions. They can also kill by omission, when they fail to guarantee to their people access to the bare essentials for life.

Pope Francis

#58. Consequences flow from a justice's interpretation in a direct and immediate way. A judicial decision respecting the incompatibility of Jim Crow with a constitutional guarantee of equality is not simply a contemplative exercise in defining the shape of a just society. It is an order

William J. Brennan

#59. The essence of sin is "I do not want to have God in my life." And the essence of God's judicial wrath is to give us what we have asked for.

Timothy Keller

#60. Appellate review is not a magic wand and we undermine public confidence in the judicial process when we make it look like it is.

Alex Kozinski

#61. Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security.

Eric Holder

#62. Seeking of the truth should be not only part of the Justice Department and part of our judicial system, but also should be ... a goal of reporters today.

John Ensign

#63. If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left.

Thomas Sowell

#64. Amnesty International continues to report that extra judicial tortures and murders continue. This is not democracy that we are exporting to Mexico, and this is certainly not what the Mexican workers signed up for.

Stephen F. Lynch

#65. Because judges may not issue advisory opinions, judicial nominees may not do so either, especially on issues likely to come before the court. That rule has always been honored.

Orrin Hatch

#66. If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#67. If people around the world knew how well people at Guantanamo Bay are treating prisoners, they would not fall prey to the accusations that some in our Chamber are making. They are all receiving judicial review.

Robin Hayes

#68. We can speak about the institution, but ultimately the bar is the group that both is in touch with the public on the one hand and understands the judicial institution on the other.

Stephen Breyer

#69. Impressed with a conviction that the due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good Government, I have considered the first arrangement of the Judicial department as essential to the happiness of our Country, and to the stability of its political system.

George Washington

#70. A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

Henrik Ibsen

#71. I had to spend my entire childhood in the Altensam dungeon like an inmate doing time for no comprehensible reason, for a crime he can't remember committing, a judicial error probably.

Thomas Bernhard

#72. It's characteristic of this judicial system that a man is condemned not only when he's innocent but also in ignorance.

Franz Kafka

#73. The Constitution provides for one democratic moment, Judge, before a lifetime of judicial independence, when the people of the United States are entitled to know as much as we can about the person that we're about to entrust with safeguarding our future and the future of our kids.

Joe Biden

#74. To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.

Irving R. Kaufman

#75. It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is "The Judge."

Wynton Marsalis

#76. I personally think that we should be extremely reluctant to use a recall mechanism for an unpopular decision simply because of the message it sends about judicial independence.

Deborah Rhode

#77. I know of no case in which you are to have a judicial proceeding, by which a man is to be deprived of any part of his property, without his having an opportunity of being heard.

Bayley

#78. The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.

John Adams

#79. Not every defeat of authority is a gain for individual freedom, nor every judicial rescue of a convict a victory for liberty.

Robert H. Jackson

#80. You have a good judicial system in the U.S., as you have learned from the Nixon-Watergate period.

Sean MacBride

#81. The power of protest depends not only on how many turn out, but also on what legislative, judicial, and civil society institutions exist to enact the will of those marching in the streets.

Cynthia P. Schneider

#82. Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

George Will

#83. The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a judicial system, and this system needs a lot of repair. Therefore, there is no need for Kentucky to start building another judicial system within the system, that we already have.

Sonny Landham

#84. Obama was particularly offended, as he put it, that "the National Security Agency has been spying on Americans without judicial approval." Justifying

Jeremy Scahill

#85. Everything from who sits on your local board of education to the prosecutors and judicial appointments in your area and much more are all impacted by who holds political office.

Al Sharpton

#86. In our system of government, the judicial and legislative branches have different roles. Judges are not politicians. Judges must decide cases, not champion causes. Judges must settle legal disputes, not pursue agendas. Judges must interpret and apply the law, not make the law.

Orrin Hatch

#87. The first session of the Congress of the United States under the Constitution was devoted principally to the problems of immediate revenues and administrative and judicial organization.

Charles A. Beard

#88. When Congress exercises the powers delegated to it by the Constitution, it may impose affirmative obligations on executive and judicial officers of state and local governments as well as ordinary citizens.

David Souter

#89. Wise men wrote the Constitution, but clever judges have been destroying it, bit by bit, turning it into an instrument of arbitrary judicial power, instead of a limitation on all government power.

Thomas Sowell

#90. It is of course true that any kind of judicial legislation is objectionable on the score of the limited interests which a Court can represent, yet there are wrongs which in fact legislatures cannot be brought to take an interest in, at least not until the Courts have acted.

Learned Hand

#91. It is hard to see Judge Roberts as a judicial activist who would place ideological purity or a particular agenda above or ahead the need for thoughtful legal reasoning.

Ron Wyden

#92. And line of cases. Justice Byron R. "Whizzer" White, a JFK appointee, dissented, calling Doe an act of "raw judicial power," as it took these decisions from the states and enshrined their determination in the Supreme Court's reasoning.

William J. Bennett

#93. If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it is not composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#94. A judicial standard means that a judicious decision can be entirely correct, even when the result does not line up with our preferred political positions or cater to certain political interests.

Orrin Hatch

#95. I have many things to say. My every right, constitutional, civil, political and judicial has been tramped upon. I have not only had no jury of my peers, but I have had no jury at all.

Susan B. Anthony

#96. When, after having examined in detail the organization of the Supreme Court, one comes to consider in sum the prerogatives that have been given it, one discovers without difficulty that a more immense judicial power has never been constituted in any people.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#97. Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#98. We must remember that judicial nominees are constrained in what they may discuss and how they may discuss it.

Orrin Hatch

#99. Now that judges embrace forcibly starving someone to death, Congress should use its appropriation power to starve the judicial budget.

Phyllis Schlafly

#100. I have been informed repeatedly that in lieu of records, I would be expected to testify about my service in the White House to demonstrate my experience and judicial philosophy,

Harriet Miers