20th-century Judge Quotes

In some of our subcultures, paper bags are often used to carry intimate personal belongings. And the sight of some of our less fortunate citizens carrying their belongings in brown paper bags is too familiar to permit such crass biases to diminish protection of privacy.

David L. Bazelon

Judges should always behave judicially by adjudicating, never politically by legislating. I leave policy to policymakers. They're preeminent, but they're not omnipotent. In other words, lawmakers decide if laws pass, but judges decide if laws pass muster. There's a fateful difference between activist judges who concoct rights and active judges who dutifully protect the rights our Framers actually enshrined.

One usually dies because one is alone, or because one has got into something over one's head. One often dies because one does not have the right alliances, because one is not given support. In Sicily the Mafia kills the servants of the State that the State has not been able to protect.

Giovanni Falcone

I have no hesitation in applying a law regardless of what I might think about it, I think any good judge recognizes his or her place in our constitutional government, and that place is not to upset the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives. So, I do not have any compunction about following the law as written by Congress.

Thomas Hardiman

I sometimes feel as if I am watching justice die.

A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.

The judiciary has a profound and humble, but vitally important role in interpreting the law and following the law, and putting aside personal beliefs and ensuring that the law has been faithfully executed, according to the real lawmaker, which is the legislature, or in the event of an interpretation of our highest law, the Constitution, by virtue of the people themselves.

William H. Pryor Jr.

A student who can weave his technology into the fabric of society can claim to have a liberal education; a student who cannot weave his technology into the fabric of society cannot claim even to be a good technologist.

Charles Mengel Allen

This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. In the legislative arena, especially when the country is closely divided, compromises tend to be the rule the day. But when judges rule this or that policy unconstitutional, there's little room for compromise: One side must win, the other must lose.

Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband – it creeps up insidiously... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone.

Geoffrey Lane, Baron Lane

Despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people—our Constitution.

Stanley F. Birch, Jr.

The First Amendment expresses our Nation's fundamental commitment to religious liberty by means of two provisions–one protecting the free exercise of religion, the other barring establishment of religion. They were written by the descendants of people who had come to this land precisely so that they could practice their religion freely. Together with the other First Amendment guarantees–of free speech, a free press, and the rights to assemble and petition–the Religion Clauses were designed to safeguard the freedom of conscience and belief that those immigrants had sought. They embody an idea that was once considered radical: Free people are entitled to free and diverse thoughts, which government ought neither to constrain nor to direct

Sandra Day O'Connor

By requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.

John Paul Stevens

The State is at the centre and the society surrounds it. Disturbances of society go in a broad spectrum from more disturbance of the serenity of life to jeopardy of the State. The acts become graver (and graver) as we journey from the peripheral of the largest circle towards the centre. In this journey we travel first through public tranquility, then through public order and lastly to the security of the State.

Mohammad Hidayatullah

Judges must follow their oaths and do their duty, heedless of editorials, letters, telegrams, threats, petitions, panellists and talk shows.In this country, we do not administer justice by plebiscite. A judge…is a public servant who must follow his conscience, whether or not he counters the manifest wishes of those he serves; whether or not his decision seems a surrender to prevalent demands.

Hiller B. Zobel

It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas.... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth,... is fundamental to our free society.

Thurgood Marshall

Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.

The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any government regulation of religious beliefs as such. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold views abhorrent to the authorities.

William J. Brennan, Jr.

In a religiously uniform culture, it is natural for people to take for granted the truth of the prevailing religion and its associated metaphysical propositions.

Our forefathers found the evils of free thinking more to be endured than the evils of inquest or suppression. This is because thoughtful, bold and independent minds are essential to the wise and considered self-government.

Robert H. Jackson

A judge is not supposed to know anything about the facts of life until they have been presented in evidence and explained to him at least three times.

Hubert Parker, Baron Parker of Waddington

It is absolutely true that I have served in two Democratic administrations. You can tell something from me and my political views from that.

Don't be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing.

Sonia Sotomayor

Everyone has, inside himself... what shall I call it? A piece of good news! Everyone is... a very great, very important character.

The kind of corruption the media talk about, the kind the Supreme Court was concerned about, involves the putative sale of votes in exchange for campaign contributions.

James L. Buckley

For better or worse, editing is what editors are for; and editing is selection and choice of material. That editors newspaper or broadcast can and do abuse this power is beyond doubt, but that is no reason to deny the discretion Congress provided.

Warren E. Burger