Felix Frankfurter Quotes - Page 3

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• The words of the Constitution... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Reading, Justice, Decision

  "Parliamentary Affairs". "The Supreme Court", Volume 3, No. 1, Winter 1949.

  8 Copy quote

• To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden-footed.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Administration, Judicial

  "Cobbledick v. United States, 309 U.S. 323". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. February 26, 1940.

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• The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Children, Book, Reading

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• It would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of constitutional history has cast upon this Court to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Order, Police

  "Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. January 2, 1952.

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• The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Self, Expression, Greed

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• I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Enough, Efficiency

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• Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.

  Felix Frankfurter

  War, Stress, Mean

  Concurring, Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 1958.

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• The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Bed, Inequality, Symbols

  "New York v. United States, 331 U.S. 284". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. May 12, 1947.

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• Judicial judgment must take deep account...of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Order, Yesterday, May

  The National Observer (Silver Spring, Maryland), March 1, 1965.

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• A license cannot be revoked because a man is red-headed or because he was divorced, except for a calling, if such there be, for which red-headedness or an unbroken marriage may have some rational bearing. If a State licensing agency lays bare its arbitrary action, or if the State law explicitly allows it to act arbitrarily, that is precisely the kind of State action which the Due Process Clause forbids.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Agency, Law

  "Barsky v. Board of Regents of the University, 347 U.S. 442". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 26, 1954.

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• One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Zero, Court, Judicial

  "The Supreme Court in the Mirror of Justice". University of Pennsylvania Law Review, April 1957.

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• If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, "good fences make good neighbors."

  Felix Frankfurter

  Church, Neighbor, Fence

  "Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education of School District, 333 U.S. 203". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 8, 1948.

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• One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution... But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Judging, Catholic, Minorities

  West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette (dissenting opinion) (1943)

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• We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Successful, Professionalism, Forget

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• Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep. I can express with very limited adequacy the passionate devotion to this land that possesses millions of our people, born, like myself, under other skies, for the privilege that that this county has bestowed in allowing them to partake of its fellowship.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Gratitude, Land, Sky

  Felix Frankfurter's acceptance speech for an award from the National Institute for Immigrant Welfare at Biltmore Hotel in New York, May 11, 1933.

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• The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Freedom, Ties, Liberty

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• Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Games, Chess, Ends

  Indianapolis v. Chase Nat'l Bank, 314 U.S. 63, 69, 1941.

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• It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of "laws" to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Book, Law, Would Be

  "Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. Co. v. Browning, 310 U.S. 362". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. May 20, 1940.

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• Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial, and not an inquisitorial, system - a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured, and may not, by coercion, prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Law, Guilt, Principles

  "Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 20, 1961.

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• Ambiguity lurks in generality, and may thus become an instrument of severity.

  Felix Frankfurter

  May, Instruments, Ambiguity

  "McComb v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 336 U.S. 187". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. February 14, 1949.

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• Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Mean, Light, Guarantees

  The New York Times, November 28, 1954.

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• Time and experience have forcefully taught that the power to inspect dwelling places, either as a matter of systematic area-by-area search or, as here, to treat a specific problem, is of indispensable importance in the maintenance of community health; a power that would be greatly hobbled by the blanket requirement of the safeguards necessary for a search of evidence of criminal acts.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Dwelling Place, Community, Criminals

  "Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. May 4, 1959.

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• Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Appeals, Electorate, Militant

  American Society for Legal History. Northeastern States Branch, Morris D. Forkosch, Felix Frankfurter (1966). “Essays in legal history in honor of Felix Frankfurter”, MICHIE

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• After all, advocates, including advocates for States, are like managers of pugilistic and election contestants in that they have a propensity for claiming everything.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Election, States, Propensity

  "First Iowa Hydro-Electric Cooperative v. Federal Power Commission (FPC), 328 U.S. 152". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 29, 1946.

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• There is no inevitability in history except as men make it.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Inevitability

  American Society for Legal History. Northeastern States Branch, Morris D. Forkosch, Felix Frankfurter (1966). “Essays in legal history in honor of Felix Frankfurter”, MICHIE

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