Top 71 Supreme Court Justice Quotes
#1. Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia should be commended for acknowledging that his views are so strong that - should the Pledge case reach the Supreme Court - he wouldn't be able to maintain the requisite impartiality.
Michael Newdow
#2. Jefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other.
Edwin Gaustad
#3. Our lawyers had their chat with the Supreme Court Justice, and promised to repast the chat to other members of the Supreme Court to find out whether they wanted to hear us out.
Dashiell Hammett
#4. There is no more moving a professional relationship than that between a law clerk and a Supreme Court justice. As a place to work, the court is unique in its intimacy and intensity.
Cliff Sloan
#5. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor serves as a model Supreme Court justice, widely recognized as a jurist with practical values, a sense of the consequences of the legal decisions being made by the Supreme Court.
Patrick Leahy
#6. I never pursued anything but acting. But as a kid, I was really interested in the Supreme Court. I wanted to to be a Supreme Court justice, but didn't want to be a lawyer. I just wanted to go straight to being a justice.
Gillian Jacobs
#7. Well, I believe that when you are confirming a United States Supreme Court Justice, that it really isn't Democratic or Republican; it's American.
Arlen Specter
#8. The American people deserve a Supreme Court justice who can demonstrate that he or she will not be beholden to the president, but only to the law.
Patrick Leahy
#9. Finally, a good prosecutor knows that her job is to enforce the law without fear or favor. Likewise, a Supreme Court Justice must interpret the laws without fear or favor.
Amy Klobuchar
#10. The solicitor general is sometimes referred to as the 10th Supreme Court justice - a pretty important position.
Arlen Specter
#11. When you have incidences like the Trayvon Martin verdict, the erosion of certain fundamental rights like voting, it just reminds us that we're always one Supreme Court justice vote away from losing the progress that has been made.
Terri Sewell
#12. We made history when President Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor, a proud Latina, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. And as the President likes to say, 'Every single one of them wasn't just the best Latino for the job, but the best person for the job.'
Charlie Gonzalez
#13. As the familiar quote usually attributed to Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis goes, We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
Jaron Lanier
#14. If [a United States Supreme Court Justice is] in the doghouse with the Chief [Justice], he gets the crud. He gets the tax cases.
Harry A. Blackmun
#15. I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they.
Sonia Sotomayor
#16. Given her lack of experience, does anyone doubt that Ms. Miers's only qualification to be a Supreme Court justice is her close connection to the president? Would the president have ever picked her if she had not been his lawyer, his close confidante, and his adviser?
Randy Barnett
#17. I used to buy into a former Supreme Court justice's argument that you can't scream fire in a crowded theater. Well, I think you can.
Larry Flynt
#18. Any successful nominee should possess both the temperament to interpret the law and the wisdom to do so fairly. The next Supreme Court Justice should have a record of protecting individual rights and a strong willingness to put aside any political agenda.
Bennie Thompson
#19. I was interested in politics very much when I was growing up, and that's what I think I really wanted to be - either a senator, or a Supreme Court Justice, and I always wanted to be a lawyer.
Michael Riedel
#20. If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.
Alan Dershowitz
#21. Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing , let alone to be a real one.
Ann Coulter
#22. 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
#23. What Mr. Obama wants in a nominee isn't really 'empathy' and 'understanding.' He wants a liberal, activist Supreme Court justice.
Karl Rove
#24. Doesn't anyone wonder why the NAACP does not have events celebrating the first black woman secretary of state?.. Why does an organization whose mission is to advance the lot of blacks not celebrate Clarence Thomas, our black Supreme Court justice?
Star Parker
#25. I wonder if there's just a sense that we have nothing to learn from any Supreme Court justice, including the great Chief Justice John Marshall.
Dahlia Lithwick
#26. I do think that being the second [female Supreme Court Justice] is wonderful, because it is a sign that being a woman in a place of importance is no longer extraordinary.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
#27. We've got another nominee coming up, well qualified, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owens has a tremendous reputation, tremendous record, but they are already marshalling their forces to try to stop that nomination.
Jay Alan Sekulow
#28. Best thunderclap came from Spengler, to the effect that science is either true or false, art is either shallow or deep. Second best came from some Supreme Court Justice, Jackson, I think, to the effect that one man's right to swing his fists stops where another man's nose begins.
Kurt Vonnegut
#29. Indeed, only one Supreme Court justice in history, one Horace Lurton, nominated by President [John] Taft, had more federal appeals court experience [than Samuel Alito].
Jon Kyl
#30. The appointment of the next Supreme Court justice must be made in the people's interest and in the nation's interest, not in the interest of any partisan faction.
Patrick Leahy
#31. Judicial excellence means that a Supreme Court justice must have a sense of the values from which our core of our political- economic system goes. In other words, we should not approve any nominee whose extreme judicial philosophy would undermine rights and liberties relied upon by all Americans.
Herb Kohl
#32. We are at war, and in time of war there is only one rule. Form your battalion and fight.
Kermit Roosevelt III
#33. The U.S. Supreme Court has called free will a "universal and persistent" foundation for our system of law, distinct from "a deterministic view of human conduct that is inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system" (United States v. Grayson, 1978).
Sam Harris
#34. For a justice of this ultimate tribunal [the U.S. Supreme Court], the opportunity for self-discovery and the occasion for self-revelation is great.
Abe Fortas
#35. Charles Evans Hughes, former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said: "Men do not die from overwork. They die from dissipation and worry." Yes, from dissipation of their energies - and worry because they never seem to get their work done.
Dale Carnegie
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. I write to withdraw as a nominee to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States ... I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the country.
Harriet Miers
#40. 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
#41. It's now up to the full Senate to move swiftly to confirm John Roberts so he can assume his duties and responsibilities as chief justice when the Supreme Court begins its new term in a matter of weeks. We call on the Senate to confirm John Roberts without delay.
Jay Alan Sekulow
#42. 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
#43. It is a different world and they [the Supreme Court] should speak for justice, not prejudice ... I seek justice, not in some distant tomorrow, not in some study commission, but now while I Iive.
Martha Griffiths
#45. This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent.
Antonin Scalia
#46. The United States Supreme Court, once a reliable if ultimate recourse for progressive and even revolutionary grievances, has become a retrograde wellspring for enormous economic and social distress.
June Jordan
#47. The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal will take care of themselves. Look after the courts of the poor, who stand most in need of justice. The security of the republic will be found in the treatment of the poor and the ignorant. In indifference to their misery and helplessness lies disaster.
Charles Evans Hughes
#48. I asked Chief Justice John Roberts about this definition of life - you know, what is life? The Supreme Court can't figure it out or doesn't want us to figure it out; the fact that we know that there is no life if there's no heartbeat and brainwaves.
Tom Coburn
#49. At least 80 percent of American prisoners are grossly over-sentenced. The Supreme Court knows this, but shows scant concern for this human side of criminal justice.
Conrad Black
#50. I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.
Sonia Sotomayor
#51. The irony of the Supreme Court hearing on these cases last week and of the outright hostility that the Court has displayed against religion in recent years is that above the head of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a concrete display of the Ten Commandments.
Cliff Stearns
#52. On June 19, 1981, a vigorously healthy Justice Potter Stewart resigned from the Supreme Court at the age of 66.
Elliott Abrams
#53. If we fulfill our responsibility to the Constitution, the Supreme Court will be filled with superior legal minds who will pursue the one agenda that our founding fathers intended in writing the Constitution: justice, rather than political or personal goals.
Chuck Grassley
#54. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, a quirky but pivotal member of the Supreme Court for 24 years, was a hoarder. He seems to have kept everything from his boyhood diaries to college correspondence to every scrap of paper that came his way on the Supreme Court.
Cliff Sloan
#55. I am a judge born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition. I hope, in my years on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and the courage to remain constant in the service of that demand.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
#56. I deeply regret the damage my original case caused women. I want the Supreme Court to examine the evidence and have a spirit of justice for women and children.
Norma McCorvey
#57. We sought justice because equal pay for equal work is an American value. That fight took me ten years. It took me all the way to the Supreme Court. And, in a 5-4 decision, they stood on the side of those who shortchanged my pay, my overtime, and my retirement just because I am a woman.
Lilly Ledbetter
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. Tom Jr. was steeped in Free Soil politics and was now chief justice of the Kansas State Supreme Court.
Robert L. O'Connell
#62. 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
#63. I am deeply honored to have been nominated for a position on the Supreme Court. And I an humbled to have been nominated for the seat that is now held by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Samuel Alito
#64. I hope his wife feeds him [Clarence Thomas, Justice, U.S. Supreme Court] lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease ... He is an absolutely reprehensible person.
Julianne Malveaux
#65. Soon after I returned to private practice, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger called me one day.
Fred F. Fielding
#66. We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution - not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#67. America acknowledged the greatness of Confucius through a trio of ancient lawgivers - Moses flanked by Confucius to his right and Solon on his left - on the monument to "Justice, the Guardian of Liberty" displayed on the eastern pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.
Patrick Mendis
#68. Will a nominee embrace and uphold the essential meaning of the four words inscribed above the entrance of the Supreme Court building: Equal justice under law?
Edward Kennedy
#69. Got good news and bad news for you, Mr. President. The good news is that Chief Justice John Roberts just saved your legacy and, perhaps, your presidency by writing for the Supreme Court majority to rule health care reform constitutional.
Ron Fournier
#70. Son, when I appoint a nigger to the bench, I want everybody to know he's a nigger. [Said to an aide in 1965 regarding the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as associate justice of the Supreme Court]
Lyndon B. Johnson
#71. All the figures who upheld and defended American slavery - Senators John C. Calhoun and Stephen Douglas, President James Buchanan, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, architect of the Dred Scott decision, and the main leaders of the Confederacy - were Democrats.
Dinesh D'Souza
