Quotes About Judiciary

#1. Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.

Todd Tiahrt

#2. [R]efusing or not refusing to execute a law to stamp it with its final character ... makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended and can never be proper.

James Madison

#3. [T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.

Thomas Jefferson

#4. The federal judiciary is unlike the other branches of government. And once confirmed, a federal judge serves for life. And there's no court above the Supreme Court.

Patrick Leahy

#5. When robbed, the rich cry out for protection and prosecution. When stealing, they expect the judiciary to look the other way.

Steven Erikson

#6. The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.

Thomas Jefferson

#7. Controlling the interpretation of the Constitution is vital to the leftist agenda of expanding the federal government's power. That means keeping the federal judiciary as liberal as possible and treating the U.S. Supreme Court's liberal legacy as sacrosanct.

Joseph Sobran

#8. We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other departments. The appeals to the people, therefore, would usually be made by the executive and judiciary departments.

James Madison

#9. The judiciary must not take on the coloration of whatever may be popular at the moment. We are guardian of rights, and we have to tell people things they often do not like to hear.

Rose Bird

#10. We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected Judiciary inferior to Congress or the President in making policy judgments. That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country.

Alberto Gonzales

#11. The judiciary has fallen to a very low state in this country. I think your part of the country has suffered especially. The federal judges of the South are a disgrace to any country, and I'll be damned if I put any man on the bench of whose character and ability there is the least doubt.

William Howard Taft

#12. Modern society, the political body, the legal and judiciary system, the state of governance, capitalism and the very fabric of the society itself, including our religions and so-called morals and values, are institutions steeped in traditions of absolute and total violence.

Bryant McGill

#13. New York [cannot] remain the center of commerce and capital for this continent, unless it has an independent bar and an honest judiciary.

Samuel J. Tilden

#14. The transformation of the D.C. Circuit has been replicated in federal courts around the country. Obama has had two hundred and eighty judges confirmed, which represents about a third of the federal judiciary.

Jeffrey Toobin

#15. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

James Madison

#16. I do not believe it is the function of the judiciary to step in and change the law because the times have changed. I do well understand the difference between legislating and judging. As a judge, it is not my function to develop public policy.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#17. Congress is, after all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.

Felix Frankfurter

#18. And I have been campaigning for the past three months trying to get the Senate Judiciary Committee that has the oversight authority and responsibility to start its own public hearings.

Sibel Edmonds

#19. President Ronald Reagan used to speak of the Soviet constitution, and he noted that it purported to grant wonderful rights of all sorts to people. But those rights were empty promises, because that system did not have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law and enforce those rights.

John Roberts

#20. If George W. Bush is given a second term, and retains a Republican Congress and a compliant federal judiciary, he and his allies are likely to embark on a campaign of political retribution the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.

Paul Begala

#21. I think that Congress' ability to reason is fully equal to that of the judiciary.

Samuel Alito

#22. The FBI with their heavy influence on the judiciary system has successfully blocked me on every turn.

Leonard Peltier

#23. The reality is that our independent judiciary is the most respected branch of our government and the envy of the world.

Ted Olson

#24. The review process was conducted in an extremely bipartisan manner. Minority members of the Judiciary Committee were responsible for the invitation of 1/3 of the witnesses who appeared.

Jo Bonner

#25. It is hostile to a democratic system to involve the judiciary in the politics of the people.

Felix Frankfurter

#26. Privatizing bits of the prison industry was a step in the right direction, but what we didn't have - until recently - were proper instruments for incentivizing the judiciary. That's what the 'kids for cash' judges were apparently experimenting with.

Thomas Frank

#27. In Iran, there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no independent judiciary, no free elections. There is no freedom of religion - not even for Shiites, who are forced by Iran's theocracy to adhere to one narrow set of official rules.

Elliott Abrams

#28. Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#29. I believe Watergate shows that the system did work. Particularly the Judiciary and the Congress, and ultimately an independent prosecutor working in the Executive Branch.

Bob Woodward

#30. Israel is a democratic state with an independent judiciary, a free press and a diverse population of many cultures, religions and creeds.

Jonathan Sacks

#31. I was asked three times directly in the hearing before the board of the judiciary whether or not I would continue to acknowledge God if I were to resume my position as chief justice. And I said I would.

Roy Moore

#32. We have to change the system. The system is very rotten. The executive is corrupt, the Congress is corrupt, the judiciary is corrupt ... So what's left We really have to have a radical and surgical change to bring back the image of our country.

Joseph Estrada

#33. The future chief justice of the United States told the delegates that an independent federal judiciary was a necessary bulwark against an overreaching Congress. If Congress were to exceed its powers, said Marshall, it would be the duty of the judiciary to declare the action void. Marshall

James F. Simon

#34. While abolishing judgeships and lower federal courts is a blunt tool and one whose use is warranted only in the most extreme of circumstances ... it is one of many possibilities to check and balance the judiciary.

Newt Gingrich

#35. If you follow Donald Trump's logic, say that he couldn't decide any civil rights cases because he would be biased.I mean, we do want a diverse and inclusive judiciary - one that looks like the people that they serve. And we do recognize the value of having diverse backgrounds represented.

Deborah Rhode

#36. Judge Roberts' civil rights record and views remained the most controversial and unexplained part of his record when the Judiciary Committee hearing concluded, just as his civil rights record and views had been the most controversial part of his record when the hearing began.

Mel Watt

#37. An independent judiciary does not mean judges independent of the Constitution from which they derive their power or independent of the laws that they are sworn to uphold.

Thomas Sowell

#38. We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution.

Charles Evans Hughes

#39. A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.

Thomas Jefferson

#40. The British judiciary needs to support intellectual property.

James Dyson

#41. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.

Sonia Sotomayor

#42. The framers of the Constitution were so clear in the federalist papers and elsewhere that they felt an independent judiciary was critical to the success of the nation.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#43. The judiciary in Burma is not independent. It's widely known, everybody knows that.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#44. Our runaway judiciary is badly in need of restraint by Congress.

Phyllis Schlafly

#45. For the first half of this century, High Court judges have been cautious to the point of timidity in expressing any criticism of governmental action; the independence of the judiciary has been of a decidedly subordinate character.

Ferdinand Mount

#46. Perhaps you should say there should be mandatory retirement even of members of the court, members of the federal judiciary. I'm sure there can be questions about whether one does as good work when you get into your - you know, I'm 67.

William Rehnquist

#47. Albania is going through a deep crisis because it lacks the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and freedom of the media. I don't think if we stop protesting the problem is solved.

Edi Rama

#48. There are checks and balances and broad separation of powers under the Constitution. Each organ of the State, i.e. the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, must have respect for the others and not encroach into each other's domain.

P. Sathasivam

#49. Even institutions of State, such as the judiciary, were seriously weakened, to the extent that the citizenry justifiably feared a breakdown in law and order. The business community was hit by a slump in sales and confidence, leading to reduced earnings and loss of jobs.

Kamisese Mara

#50. Unfortunately, the contemporary domestic intelligence apparatus is so vast as to render the judiciary incapable of fine-grained review of its decisions.

Frank Pasquale

#51. While the seeming independence of the federal judiciary has played a vital part in making its actions virtual Holy Writ for the bulk of the people, it is also and ever true that the judiciary is part and parcel of the government apparatus and appointed by the executive and legislative branches.

Murray Rothbard

#52. None of the constitutional, legal or other principles bars me from returning to the judiciary, since the judiciary remains independent if the actors remain independent and fair.

Khil Raj Regmi

#53. We call on the Senate to reject any judicial nominee who does not affirm fundamental civil rights, including a woman's right [to obtain an abortion on demand]. The threat an [pro-life] judiciary poses to women's lives demands nothing less.

Susana Martinez

#54. Judgment does not necessarily relate to the judiciary system

Sunday Adelaja

#55. It is galling to see such mendacious hypocrites as Kennedy and Biden at the Senate Judiciary Committee sitting in judgment on distinguished jurists.

Conrad Black

#56. The crisis of modern democracy is a profound one. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder.

Arundhati Roy

#57. Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches.

James Madison

#58. I have to think of my status as a resident in this country. But I do insist that in Paraguay there was order; the judiciary had the power of complete independence; justice was fully exercised.

Alfredo Stroessner

#59. We must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a World Government, patterned after our Own Government with a legislature, executive and judiciary and police.

Walter Cronkite

#60. A national legal organization is giving very serious thought to using The Betrayal of America as a legal basis for asking the House Judiciary Committee to institute impeachment proceedings against these five justices.

Vincent Bugliosi

#61. Mexico needs schools, rural development, and an independent judiciary, not high-tech weaponry.

Stephen Kinzer

#62. There is a danger to judicial independence when people have no understanding of how the judiciary fits into the constitutional scheme.

David Souter

#63. The debate over judicial nominations is a debate over the judiciary itself. It is a debate over how much power unelected judges should have in our system of government, how much control judges should have over a written constitution that belongs to the people.

Orrin Hatch

#64. Judiciary is where my passion is.

Patrick Leahy

#65. Separation of power says the judiciary committee is supposed to confirm qualified judges and then what the Supreme Court does, that is their function, not my function.

Arlen Specter

#66. The vote by the Judiciary Committee reflects the fact that John Roberts is an exceptional nominee with a conservative judicial philosophy - a philosophy that represents mainstream America.

Jay Alan Sekulow

#67. America should meet its obligations in the form of Social Security, Medicare, our ability to pay our military, legally binding legislation that allows unemployment compensation, the judiciary, the federal court system, the federal prison system, all those kinds of things have to be paid for.

Bill Johnson

#68. If the state - and within the state, the judiciary particularly - harasses and undermines the Church , in any society the state undoes itself.

Russell Kirk

#69. My first endeavor was to save the core of the German system of justice: the independent judiciary.

Hans Frank

#70. The proper role of the judiciary is one of interpreting and applying the law, not making it.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#71. All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.

Andrew Jackson

#72. So long as we mayhavean independent Judiciary, the great interests of the people will be safe.

John Rutledge

#73. For a long time in American history, people didn't even come up before the Senate. They didn't come before the Judiciary Committee, and up until about 1923, something like that.

Fred Thompson

#74. [The judiciary is] the least dangerous branch of our government.

Alexander Bickel

#75. A federal judge did as he was supposed to do and upheld the Constitution. We should be thankful that we have judiciary that will do that.

Michael Newdow

#76. As a result of this article, I was invited to testify in the Senate Judiciary Committee on privacy law.

Norman Lamm

#77. We [Israel] already have two very strong democratic tools - the two basic laws of personal liberties and human rights. I think we should also provide the judiciary with another tool so that they can rely on the fact that Israel is a Jewish state in verdicts.

Ayelet Shaked

#78. The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.

Thomas Jefferson

#79. I find it difficult to believe that God would want us to strip the courts of their powers to interpret the laws of this land, albeit with the divergent opinions. I shudder that my colleagues do not understand the dynamics of the Federal judiciary.

Alcee Hastings

#80. I have to say that the judges and our judiciary system makes better decisions than the politicians.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#81. I applaud the fact that the president has reached out to the members of Judiciary Committee. And I applaud. the fact that he has been meeting with members of the Judiciary Committee. He's been seeking out Republicans as well as Democrats.

Edward Kennedy

#82. This has not been a legislative process worthy of the Senate. Members of the Judiciary Committee, as I just said, were implored to save their amendments for the floor. Then, when we got here, we were told no amendments could be accepted.

Russ Feingold

#83. Just look at the Judiciary Committee, You have some people on the Judiciary Committee who may well decide not to send the nomination to the floor, and now it all depends on what Democrats do.

Barbara Boxer

#84. The judiciary must be strengthened and released from political interference.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#85. The crowning feature of the federal system is the supremacy of the judiciary over all other branches of government in matters relating to the rights of persons and property.

Charles A. Beard

#86. The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

Thomas Jefferson

#87. And in that confirmation process, I sat for 17 hours in front of a senate judiciary committee.

Stephen Breyer

#88. Altering the Constitution has become the daily business of the Federal Government which the document is supposed to guide and limit. Both Congress and the judiciary assume, and exercise, countless powers they aren't entitled to.

Joseph Sobran

#89. Jim, I'm not aware of any formal requests from the Senate Judiciary Committee for these kinds of documents.

Alberto Gonzales

#90. I have had it up to here with the prosecutions, the government's attitude, the judiciary, the media's stance and the majority of Turks who view the Kurdish people's justified cause through a nationalist lens.

Osman Baydemir

#91. The British judiciary is one of the most corrupt in the world because of politically active judges.

Ken Livingstone

#92. The Only cure for nihilism is for liberal democratic societies - their electorates, their judiciary, and their political leadership- to insist that force is legitimate only to the degree that it serves defensible poltical goals. Thus implies a constant exercise of due diligence ...

Michael Ignatieff

#93. My government has promised to comprehensively respect the independence of the judiciary.

Victor Ponta

#94. The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.

Caroline Kennedy

#95. Because the democratic process operates apart from the Church, it possesses no corrective against corrupted human nature beyond its own equally corrupt judiciary, which ends by judging not only points of law but morality itself.

Solange Hertz

#96. The Constitution is what the judges say it is, every time.

Fred Rodell

#97. Slavery tolerates no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of opinion.

Hinton Rowan Helper

#98. The President and the Congress are all very well in their way. They can say what they think they think, but it rests with the Supreme Court to decide what they have really thought.

Theodore Roosevelt