Warren E. Burger Quotes & Sayings

The trial of a case is a three-legged stool - a judge and two advocates. — Warren E. Burger

Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood. — Warren E. Burger

The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily likes of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week. — Warren E. Burger

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. — Warren E. Burger

There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. — Warren E. Burger

Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life. — Warren E. Burger

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America. — Warren E. Burger

[No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides. — Warren E. Burger

The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest. — Warren E. Burger

We may have lured judges into roaming at large in the constitutional field. — Warren E. Burger

A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment. — Warren E. Burger

However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises. — Warren E. Burger

It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to 'discover' a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing. — Warren E. Burger

There may be some incorrigible human beings who cannot be changed except by God's own mercy to that one person. — Warren E. Burger

There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse. — Warren E. Burger

There can be no assumption that today's majority is 'right' and the Amish and others like them are 'wrong.' A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different. — Warren E. Burger

Doctors still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns? — Warren E. Burger

The right of every person "to be let alone" must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate. — Warren E. Burger

We may be well on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated. — Warren E. Burger

The notion that most people want black-robed judges, well-dressed lawyers and fine-paneled courtrooms as the setting to resolve their disputes is not correct. People with problems, like people with pains, want relief, and they want it as quickly and inexpensively as possible. — Warren E. Burger

To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching. — Warren E. Burger

Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values. — Warren E. Burger

The men who wrote the First Amendment religion clause did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that amendment ... the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. It can hardly be thought that in the same week the members of the first Congress voted to appoint and pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the First Amendment ... (that) they intended to forbid what they had just declared acceptable. — Warren E. Burger

The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts. — Warren E. Burger

Judges rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times. — Warren E. Burger

We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians. — Warren E. Burger

It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house. — Warren E. Burger

History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality. — Warren E. Burger