Quotes About Justices

#1. I think that the justices were totally answering the way that they should. I think that the senators, as best I could tell, for the most part, Democrat and Republican, respected that.

Fred Thompson

#2. The papers reveal that in several key abortion cases, justices were keenly interested in the perceived public reaction to their rulings - indicating that courts can be influenced by public sentiment.

Lee Greenwood

#3. 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

#4. The Justices are currently considering a case, argued last month, which seeks to extend the writ of habeas corpus to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo.

John Yoo

#5. It is a mistake to suppose that the Supreme Court is either honoured or helped by being spoken of as beyond criticism. On the contrary, the life and character of its justices should be the objects of constant watchfulness by all, and its judgments subject to the freest criticism.

David Josiah Brewer

#6. 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

#7. Let us not be justices of the peace, but angels of peace.

Therese Of Lisieux

#8. When I worked in the Department of Justice, in the office of the solicitor general, it was my job to argue cases for the United States before the Supreme court. I always found it very moving to stand before the justices and say, 'I speak for my country.'

John Roberts

#9. I think the nine justices think the solicitor general is the 35th clerk.

Elena Kagan

#10. You know, it shows how old I am. I can remember the good old days when the president picked the Supreme Court justices instead of the other way around.

Jay Leno

#11. If we think there is an undermining now, just wait if Sharia is adopted or utilized by justices in the United States.

Donald Trump

#12. 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

#13. The justices have constitutionally protected obscenity in libraries, filth over cable television, and now unlimited internet pornography.

Phyllis Schlafly

#14. This is the most historic moment in Supreme Court history in our lifetime, no question about it. These are justices who are going to serve for decades.

Jay Alan Sekulow

#15. 'Bush v. Gore' gave us a president who lost the popular vote, eventually appointed two more justices, and led us into a war of choice while failing to regulate a financial system dependent on toxic mortgage-backed derivatives.

Marvin Ammori

#16. Every time I lied to my dad I felt like I was going up against the Supreme Court justices and pleading my case.

Claire Contreras

#17. Sometimes one of the justices, because they're, you know, they're brilliant lawyers themselves, can put the question in a particular way so that, even if you've prepared to talk about the topic, the question is put in such an excruciatingly difficult way that there's just no good way to handle it.

Donald Verrilli Jr.

#18. There is another legal sense of the word "copyright" much emphasized by several English justices.

Richard Rogers Bowker

#19. All social space is suffused with political meanings and agendas, the very stones and walls a kind of testament to the ongoing struggles for liberation and justices.

Mark Kingwell

#20. Many voters think about the makeup of the Supreme Court when they are choosing a president. The justices deal not only with constitutional issues but also with social issues that were unknown to the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution more than 200 years ago.

Helen Thomas

#21. If you want a president who will upend the status quo in Washington, D.C., and appoint justices of the Supreme Court who will uphold the Constitution, we have but one choice, and that man is ready. This team is ready. Our party is ready and when we elect Donald Trump, the 45th president.

Mike Pence

#22. For weeks, [Sonia] Sotomayor had seen drafts of Ginsburg's opinion as it circulated among the justices. She knew she was about to be a public target. But she would have the courage of her convictions - perhaps stubbornly, misguidedly - yet with confidence enough to be the one in an 8-1 vote.

Joan Biskupic

#23. Painters
and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians, they are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong someday!

Kurt Vonnegut

#24. We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans.

William J. Brennan Jr.

#25. I do try very hard to develop themes that are easily understood and that, hopefully, will paint vivid images of the legal principles and implications of the ruling that will stick in the Justices' heads and will help influence how they think about the case.

Patricia Millett

#26. Cited Riley versus California." "That's my girl! Cocounsel, I mean. Jeez, that case came down just in time! Unanimous. All nine justices. Cops need a warrant to search your cell phone.

Paul Levine

#27. Hillary Clinton will nominate justices to the Supreme Court who are prepared to overturn Citizens United!

Bernie Sanders

#28. Justices look solemn in their formal black robes, but every so often they like to have a little fun by taking on a strange case, or overturning a presidential election, that sort of thing.

Christopher Buckley

#29. The American Jews are liberal en masse because the 'Bill Of Rights' guarantees for them (through their evolutionist Justices) to keep the majority and their 'Democracy' in check.

Ibrahim Ibrahim

#30. FDR's justices were allies while he was alive, but after he died, they developed four totally different theories of what the Constitution is, two of which are considered conservative and two of which are considered liberal.

Noah Feldman

#31. If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.

Thomas Jefferson

#32. Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

Richard M. Nixon

#33. Since Vice President Al Gore is constantly making things up, it should come as no surprise that he wants Supreme Court justices who will do the same. As Gore put it, he will appoint judges who view the Constitution as a 'document that grows'.

Ann Coulter

#34. It was OK for the media to pursue Former President Clinton year after year for lying about a private, consensual sexual affair, but we have five justices who committed one of the biggest crimes in American History, and it ceased to be a big story.

Vincent Bugliosi

#35. August 19, 1981: President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court. Male justices who had made noises over the years about resigning if a woman ever joined their ranks stay put.

Irin Carmon

#36. To hear both critics and defenders talk about the fitness of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, you'd think the most successful Supreme Court justices had been warm, collegial consensus-builders. But history tells a different story.

Noah Feldman

#37. Within the pages of The Betrayal of America I prove that these justices were absolutely up to no good, and they deliberately set out to hand the election to George Bush.

Vincent Bugliosi

#38. While I have the greatest respect for the Supreme Court's members, I cannot claim familiarity with any particular judicial philosophies the justices might possess.

Patricia Millett

#39. The Supreme Court justices are able to decide fewer than 1 percent of all the appeals

James Duane

#40. Let it be said that when given a chance to complete the liberation of black Americans, on June 23, 2003 five justices consigned them to another generation - or, perhaps, a term of indefinite duration - of virtual enslavement to the past.

Ward Connerly

#41. The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.

Paul Valery

#42. Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property.

Tim LaHaye

#43. 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

#44. This is the difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals want justices to vote a certain way. We [ conservatives] want a particular legal philosophy, a philosophy for how to interpret the Constitution.

Ann Coulter

#45. (45) We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or other officials, only men that know the law of the realm and are minded to keep it well.

Patrick Henry

#46. We give Supreme Court justices this freedom because we expect them to remain above the pull of politics, to avoid the effects of public excitement and allow a broader view, not tied to the whims of the majority at a certain moment in history.

Herb Kohl

#47. I'm convinced that our duty to provide advice and consent for justices of the Supreme Court is our most important constitutional responsibility.

Frank Lautenberg

#48. Strangely enough, politics may just be the one realm in which having kids imposes no penalty on women. Kids are practically a necessity. For scientists, or Supreme Court justices, or chief executives, or the woman who wants to learn to fly F-l8s off an aircraft carrier, it works differently.

Stacy Schiff

#49. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most liberal and illumined of the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Donna Leon

#50. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell asleep during Obama's speech. She woke up with the other justices drawing a gavel on her face.

Conan O'Brien

#51. I think [Louis] Brandeis challenges all of the current justices. As he said, "If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold." You have to take the values that the framers were concerned about and translate them into this new age.

Jeffrey Rosen

#52. There have been 111 Justices in the Supreme Court of the United States. Only three have been women. If she is confirmed, Solicitor General Kagan will bring the Supreme Court to an historical high-water mark, with three women concurrently serving as Justices.

Patrick Leahy

#53. In a recent decision of the Supreme Court, not made, however, by the full court, and concurred in by only four justices, it was held that the seller of a patented mimeograph could bind the purchaser to use only his ink in the machine, though the ink was not patented.

John Bates Clark

#54. I believe that justices must recognize that our Constitution is an 18th-century document that needs to be applied in the context of the 21st century.

Frank Lautenberg

#55. It's sobering to think of the seventeen chief justices; certainly a solid majority of them have to be characterized as failures. The successful ones are hard to number.

John Roberts

#56. The traditional practice is that the justices don't ask the attorney general any questions, so as not to embarrass him. But Bobby Kennedy had let them know that he didn't mind if they asked him questions and they did.

Harold H. Greene

#57. What I don't like is judges legislating from the bench. And as president of the United States, I will appoint justices who uphold the Constitution and who don't see themselves as a super legislature.

Michele Bachmann

#58. Roosevelt got a chance to name an amazing nine justices of the Supreme Court. He was not namby-pamby on this question. He wanted people who shared his views, he wanted liberals, and he wanted lots of them.

Noah Feldman

#59. Justices are not politicians. They don't run on a political platform, and senators should not ask them to do so.

John Cornyn

#60. The main point of the Klan's orgy of violence was to prevent blacks from voting - voting, that is, for Republicans. Leading Democrats, including at least one president, two Supreme Court justices, and innumerable senators and congressmen, were Klan members.

Dinesh D'Souza

#61. Young women need to know that abortion rights and abortion access are not presents bestowed or retracted by powerful men (or women) - Presidents, Supreme Court justices, legislators, lobbyists - but freedoms won, as freedom always is, by people struggling on their own behalf.

Katha Pollitt

#62. While some of the tales of woe emanating from the court are enough to bring tears to the eyes, it is true that only Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off.

John Roberts

#63. The people of Ohio are not happy with what he's doing. I can tell you that. They're not happy with what [John Kasich] is doing. But the Republican Party more than any other thing has to have a victory, a presidential victory, for one thing, if nothing else: Supreme Court justices.

Donald Trump

#64. In 'Bush v. Gore,' five justices had a partisan outcome in mind and then made up the judicial principle to justify it, while claiming that the decision would not be precedent for any future cases.

Marvin Ammori