Decisions The Supreme Quotes & Sayings

We often imagine that the court serves as a sort of neutral umpire controlling the warring political branches. But this is mostly myth. The justices of the Supreme Court are themselves actors in the struggle for power, and when they intervene, they think carefully about how their decisions will affect the court's own legitimacy and authority. — Noah Feldman

In 1962 and 1963, there were two abominable decisions out of the Supreme Court, and that was taking prayer out of school, and taking bible reading out of school. But you know, if you look at the statistics, two very critical things happened after that date. Number one: teen pregnancy skyrocketed. Number two: violent crime skyrocketed. — Rafael Cruz

Religion that is imposed upon its recipients turns out to engender either indifference or resentment. Most American religious leaders have recognized that persuasion is far more powerful than coercion when it comes to promoting one's religious views ... Not surprisingly, then, large numbers of religious leaders have supported the Supreme Court in its prayer decisions. — William F. Schulz

We live amid falling taboos. In our crowded little hour of history we have seen how the prejudice of religion no longer can bar the way to the White House. Some of you may live to see the day when the prejudice of sex no longer places the Presidency beyond the reach of a greatly gifted American lady. Long before them, I hope you will see a woman member of the Supreme Court of the United States. In Congress and in our State Legislatures we need more women to bring their sensitive experience to the shaping of our decisions. — Lyndon B. Johnson

If the court is a political institution making important political decisions, then the public should debate the politics of Supreme Court decisions. — Marvin Ammori

But I am pro-life and will intend, if I'm president of the United States, to encourage pro-life policies. [ ... ] And I hope to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will follow the law and the constitution. And it would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue. — Mitt Romney

At issue here is a basic law which enables the Supreme Court to quash laws in extreme cases. Up until now, this right of the Supreme Court was not mentioned anywhere, but was just taken. At the same time, we want to enable the Knesset to overrule decisions of the Supreme Court. — Ayelet Shaked

As the guardian of our rights, the Supreme Court makes decisions every year which either protect the individual or leave him at the mercy of more powerful forces in our society. — Herb Kohl

The function of traditional history is to create a citizenry that looks to the top - the president, Congress, the Supreme Court - to make the important decisions. That's what traditional history is all about: the laws that were passed, the decisions made by the court. So much of history is built around "the great men." All of that is very anti-democratic. — Howard Zinn

We binge on instant knowledge, but we are learning the hazards, and readers are warier than they used to be of nanosecond-interpretations of Supreme Court decisions. — Evan Osnos

Despite two decisions, in 2008 and 2010, by the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally affirming that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms against infringement by the government, state legislatures continue to do just that - enact laws that significantly infringe this fundamental human right. — Bob Barr

And line of cases. Justice Byron R. "Whizzer" White, a JFK appointee, dissented, calling Doe an act of "raw judicial power," as it took these decisions from the states and enshrined their determination in the Supreme Court's reasoning. — William J. Bennett

In my lifetime, it's the Supreme Court, not Congress, that integrated our public schools, that allowed people of different races to marry, and established the principle that our government should respect the value of privacy of American families. These decisions are the legacy of justices who chose to expand American freedom. — Dick Durbin

We've gone down a road to which we don't have the answers for. That's why we have the schizophrenic decisions coming out of the Supreme Court that don't balance logically with one versus another decision. — Tom Coburn

The nation will be shaped for decades by decisions that are made by President Bush and the Senate about the future of the Supreme Court. — Ralph G. Neas

We should start calling this law SCOTUScare ... [T]his Court's two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years ... And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites. — Antonin Scalia

...the Supreme Court made several liberal decisions in the 1970s, indicating the moral decline of the nation as a whole. — Kurt Grussendorf

The Supreme Court is composed of two groups known as the Infallible Five and the Furious Four. The first group writes those majority decisions on patent law that have brought patent lawyers to their present condition. The second groups writes the dissenting opinions, trying to hold to the law as it was laid down by the first groups the week before. The composition of each group shifts from decision to decision, so that no one justice is right all the time. They sort of pass the infallibility around to keep peace in the family." -- The Improbable Profession — Leonard Lockhard

Eisenhower has been much criticized for his failure publicly to endorse the Court's decision. But he felt that doing so would set an undesirable precedent. If a president endorsed decisions he agreed with, might he feel compelled to oppose decisions he did not agree with? And what would that do to the rule of law? "The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold ... the constitutional processes ... I will obey."3 — William J. Bennett

How then shall mathematical concepts be judged? They shall not be judged. Mathematics is the supreme arbiter. From its decisions there is no appeal. We cannot change the rules of the game, we cannot ascertain whether the game is fair. We can only study the player at his game; not, however, with the detached attitude of a bystander, for we are watching our own minds at play. — David Van Dantzig

If logic and reason, the hard, cold products of the mind, can be relied upon to deliver justice or produce the truth, how is it that these brain-heavy judges rarely agree? Five-to-four decisions are the rule, not the exception. Nearly half of the court must be unjust and wrong nearly half of the time. Each decision, whether the majority or minority, exudes logic and reason like the obfuscating ink from a jellyfish, and in language as opaque. The minority could have as easily become the decision of the court. At once we realize that logic, no matter how pretty and neat, that reason, no matter how seemingly profound and deep, does not necessarily produce truth, much less justice. Logic and reason often become but tools used by those in power to deliver their load of injustice to the people. And ultimate truth, if, indeed, it exists, is rarely recognizable in the endless rows of long words that crowd page after page of most judicial regurgitations. — Gerry Spence

[I]f the policy of the Government, upon vital questions affecting, the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their Government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal. — Abraham Lincoln

A little more than half a century after Brown, the election of Obama gave hope to the country and the world that a new racial climate had emerged in America, or that it would. But such audacious hopes would be short-lived. A rash of voter-suppression legislation, a series of unfathomable Supreme Court decisions, the rise of stand-your-ground laws, and continuing police brutality make clear that Obama's election and reelection have unleashed yet another wave of fear and anger. It — Jesmyn Ward

We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions. — Cornel West

Mathematics is the supreme judge; from its decisions there is no appeal. — Tobias Dantzig

The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision. — David Boies

If Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist wasn't addicted to the pain-killing drug his doctor prescribed, but instead it was just that the drug had 'established an interrelationship with the body, such that if the drug is removed precipitously, there is a reaction,' you needn't question that his decisions might have been influenced by his drug addiction. — William Lutz

The Supreme Court has also issued and never reversed a number of decisions that are repugnant to the Constitution's vision of human dignity and equality. — Sam Brownback

The Supreme Court is divided almost in half on the decisions. Talk about an international court. How would we ever agree with a lot of foreigners when we can't even agree among our own judges? — Will Rogers

The truth of the matter is there is significant debate among judicial scholars today as to whether or not we've gone off on the wrong path with regard to Supreme Court decisions. — Joe Biden

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor serves as a model Supreme Court justice, widely recognized as a jurist with practical values, a sense of the consequences of the legal decisions being made by the Supreme Court. — Patrick Leahy

Justice Harry Blackmun's majority opinion in Roe v. Wade was all about privacy, but the most private parts of a woman's body and the most private decisions she will ever make have never been more public. Everyone gets to weigh in. Even, according to the five conservative Catholic men on the Supreme Court, her employer. — Katha Pollitt