Judicial Quotes - Page 3

• No matter how badly senators want to know things, judicial nominees are limited in what they may discuss. That limitation is real. And it comes from the very nature of what judges do.

  Orrin Hatch

  Real, Judging, May

  "Day One of the Roberts Hearings". Orrin Hatch's speech at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., www.washingtonpost.com. September 12, 2005.

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• 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

  Government, Judging, Rejection

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• Egotism erects its center in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation. Egotism sows for gratitude, love for the ungrateful. Love gives, egotism lends; and love does this before the throne of judicial truth, indifferent if for the enjoyment of the following moment, or with the view to a martyr's crown--indifferent whether the reward is in this life or in the next.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Gratitude, Love Is, Axes

  Friedrich Schiller (2017). “Philosophical Letters of Friedrich Schiller”, p.20, Litres

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• 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

  Exercise, Order, Justice

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• No legislative, administrative or judicial activity in the Hong Kong SAR is allowed to contradict the Basic Law, let alone to go against the Basic Law.

  Wu Bangguo

  Law, Hong Kong, Contradiction

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• 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

  President, Might, Vote

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• The idea that there aren't mistakes made constantly in the judicial system is too obvious even to need to mention.

  James Toback

  Mistake, Ideas, Needs

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. April 30, 2009.

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• 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

  Political, Peers, Jury

  Remarks in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York, ecssba.rutgers.edu. June 19, 1873.

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• I intend to go right on appointing highly qualified individuals of the highest personal integrity to the bench, individuals who understand the danger of short-circuiting the electoral process and disenfranchising the people through judicial activism.

  Ronald Reagan

  Integrity, People, Benches

  Reagan, Ronald (1988). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1985”, p.1270, Best Books on

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• The activists will not stop in trying to impose their extreme views on the rest of us, and they have now plotted out a state-by-state strategy to increase the number of judicial decisions redefining marriage without the voice of the people being heard.

  Jim Bunning

  Views, Voice, Numbers

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• 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

  Military, Independent, Media

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• 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

  Running, Santa Barbara, Wind

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• Appeal to all scholars of stupidity in the world. Come to Italy, this country has the highest rate of morons of the universe, especially among political, bureaucratic, judicial, religious, intellectual, artistic, and mass media members, so it is the best place to develop your own field research.

  William C. Brown

  Country, Religious, Media

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• In the political context fair means somebody that will vote for the unions or for the business. It can't mean that in the judicial context or we're in real trouble.

  Anthony Kennedy

  Real, Mean, Political

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• Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.

  John Marshall

  Exercise, Law, Judging

  Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 738, 866, 1824.

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• 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

  Victory, Liberty, Gains

  "The Task of Maintaining Our Liberties: The Role of the Judiciary". American Bar Association Journal, Volume 39, No. 11, p. 964, www.jstor.org. November 1953.

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• Of course, such judicial misconstruction theoretically can be cured by constitutional amendment. But the period of gestation of a constitutional amendment, or of any law reform, is reckoned in decades usually; in years, at least. And, after all, as the Court itself asserted in overruling the minimum-wage cases, it may not be the Constitution that was at fault.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Gestation Period, Years, Law

  "The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy: A Study in Crisis in American Power Politics". Book by Robert H. Jackson, p. 297, 1941.

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• Individuals because of their identity can't render an impartial judgment is just deeply offensive and contrary to all the ideals of the judicial system that we value.

  Deborah Rhode

  Identity, Offensive, Judgment

  "What Would Brandeis Do?". "Amicus" with Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. June 16, 2016.

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• I think it's important to bring somebody from outside the system, the judicial system, somebody that hasn't been on the bench and, therefore, there's not a lot of opinions for people to look at.

  George W. Bush

  Thinking, People, Important

  George W. Bush's Press Conference, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. October 4, 2005.

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• Judicial excellence requires candor before confirmation. We are being asked to give the nominee enormous power.

  Herb Kohl

  Giving, Excellence, Confirmation

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• 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

  Country, Progress, Crime

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• Politics is corrupting the American judicial system in much the same way the judicial system was corrupted in Nazi Germany.

  Benjamin Carson

  Germany, Way, Nazi

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• I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge. It's the difference between being a judge and being a law professor.

  John Roberts

  Thinking, Views, Law

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• When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself.

  Daniel Webster

  Robes, Touched

  Daniel Webster, Edward Everett (1851). “The Works of Daniel Webster ...”, p.201

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• A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.

  Sam Ervin

  Father, Mean, Judging

  Sam J. Ervin Jr. (2014). “Humor of a Country Lawyer”, p.38, UNC Press Books

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