Supreme Court Justice Quotes

There are so many really good role models out there, we just have to make sure that we don't glorify just one type. We have the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who is ready to be a force in kids' lives. I could name hundreds of people like her.

In fact, Native American Rights Fund has a project called the Supreme Court Project. And quite frankly, it's focused on trying to keep cases out of the Supreme Court. This Supreme Court, Justice Roberts is actually, hard to believe, was probably worse than the Rehnquist Court. If you look at the few decisions that it's issued.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The solicitor general is sometimes referred to as the 10th Supreme Court justice - a pretty important position.

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.

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.

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.

The people of Ohio are not happy with what he's doing. I can tell you that. They're not happy with what he [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.

I had a massive victory over Ted [Cruz], it turned out. Remember Indiana was gonna be the change? I was gonna win New York, I was gonna win, then Indiana? But Indiana was a landslide. You gotta get over it. You know, at some point you gotta get over it. Otherwise we're gonna have three or four new Supreme Court justices that are going to be a disaster for the Republican Party.

Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing , let alone to be a real one.

Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.

The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.

In the words of Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, we have a choice between a democracy or vast concentrations of wealth. We have vast concentrations of wealth which has bought its way into our democracy with its political leaders who exemplify the merger of that economic and political elite.

Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.

My mother used to say: 'It's not enough to be Hungarian. You still need a little talent, too.' To paraphrase her, its not enough to be conservative, you still need to have the brainpower to be a Supreme Court justice. And, if Harriet Miers is confirmed, she likely won't be in the same league with her colleagues in terms of gray matter.

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.

It wouldn't matter if every single President since Washington had been a Bible-toting, evangelical Christian. They weren't, of course, but even if they had been, it still would not change the secular foundation of our republic. Christians like to quote various Presidents or Supreme Court Justices who (quite incorrectly) have referred to our "Christian nation." But what do those quotes prove? I could quote Richard Nixon, but would that prove that ours was intended to be a nation of crooks?

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.

If [a United States Supreme Court Justice is] in the doghouse with the Chief [Justice], he gets the crud. He gets the tax cases.

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.'

I want to appoint Supreme Court justices who understand the way the world really works, who have real-life experience, who have not just been in a big law firm and maybe clerked for a judge and then gotten on the bench, but, you know, maybe they tried some more cases, they actually understand what people are up against.

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.

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.

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].

I am not a conservative but I have spoken out for years against the staggering amount blind hatred directed at black conservatives by liberals. Liberals are shockingly quick to demean and dismiss brilliant black people like Rice, Carson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Professor Walter E. Williams and economist Thomas Sowell because they don't fit into the role they have carved out for a black person in America. Black Americans must be obedient liberals on all things or risk being called a race traitor or an Uncle Tom.

If elected president I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice. And the nominee will say, we are going to overturn this disastrous decision on Citizens United because that decision is undermining American democracy. I do not believe that billionaires should be allowed to buy politicians.

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.

[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

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.

It's our last chance [November 8, 2016]. And that includes Supreme Court justices and Second Amendment. Remember that.

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

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.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

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.

I was very pleased to get a Supreme Court justice suggesting a column, so I went and did a column about Beano. I went with my wife and another guy to a Mexican restaurant, which we thought would be the ultimate test for an antiflatulance product. There's a reason most of Mexico is located out of doors. And it worked. Several newspapers refused to run that column. But they did run advertisements for Beano.

What Mr. Obama wants in a nominee isn't really 'empathy' and 'understanding.' He wants a liberal, activist Supreme Court justice.

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.

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.

When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.

The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas [and] the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.

Donald Trump's insulting comments about women go hand in hand with his plans to defund Planned Parenthood and appoint Supreme Court justices who will end legal abortion.

It's quite a stark contrast between the candidates, in how they will change things for women. Hillary Clinton wants to appoint Supreme Court Justices who will protect Roe v Wade. [Donald] Trump wants to punish women for getting abortions and defund Planned Parenthood.

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.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.