Supreme Court Case Quotes & Sayings

I was covering the Supreme Court when it decided Gideon v. Wainright, and the case has always had special meaning for me. — Anthony Lewis

[Justice] Murphy... who ruled against the state [anti-sodomy] law... didn't see why the Supreme Court had to dwell on the historical background of sodomy laws [before striking them down]. All one really had to know to decide the case, he reasoned, was that Texas and its legions of moralizers let people have sex with animals. End of story. — Dale Carpenter

I deeply regret the damage my original case caused women. I want the Supreme Court to examine the evidence and have a spirit of justice for women and children. — Norma McCorvey

In rendering its decision in our case, the Supreme Court equated money with speech because these days it takes the first to make yourself heard. — James L. Buckley

In the case Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court ruled that - under 'separation of church and state' - it was unconstitutional for a student in school to even see a copy of the Ten Commandments. — David Barton

I got the chance to argue my first case in Supreme Court, a criminal case arising in Alabama that involved the right of a defendant to counsel at a critical stage in a capital case before a trial. — Constance Baker Motley

Due to the oath I swore to the constitution when I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, by virtue of the universal human right to self defense, in accordance with the Supreme Court case, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the statutes under which I am being charged are unconstitutional and thus null and void, and on behalf of all freedom loving Americans, I plead not guilty. — Adam Kokesh

That was the same case in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously concluded that, if they adhered to the insane interpretation of this terrible statute that was being defended by the Department of Justice, you could be prosecuted for using a few drops of vinegar to poison your child's goldfish. — James Duane

The FBI wants Apple to write software code to help it break into the iPhone. Apple doesn't want to say this. Andrew Crocker, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, a digital civil rights group, says the government can't make you say what you don't believe. He looks to a Supreme Court case that began in New Hampshire. — Laura Sydell

Every time I lied to my dad I felt like I was going up against the Supreme Court justices and pleading my case. — Claire Contreras

The Supreme Court has declared that such a plea of nolo contendere "admits guilt for the purposes of the case. — George W. Stocking

In the Pentagon Papers case, the government asserted in the Supreme Court that the publication of the material was a threat to national security. It turned out it was not a threat to U.S. security. But even if it had been, that doesn't mean that it couldn't be published. — Alan Dershowitz

Whether D.C. residents will be full-fledged citizens seems to be a case worthy of the Supreme Court. — Walter Smith

I try to do two moot courts for every Supreme Court case (and one to two for courts of appeals), and to ensure I am being mooted by people who know the Supreme Court well and are coming to the case fresh. — Patricia Millett

I don't believe that Jesus would approve abortion except in the case of incest, rape or the mother's life in danger. But I had to enforce the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade so I tried to do everything I could to minimize the need for abortions. — Jimmy Carter

I am bound by the laws of the United States and all 50 states ... I am not bound by any case or any court to which I myself am not a party ... I don't think the Congress of the United States is subservient to the courts ... They can ignore a Supreme Court ruling if they so choose. — Pat Robertson

In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that individual communities should set obscenity standards. Whenever a case is tried, it will be based on a community standard for that particular place. — Larry Flynt

As the law minister, I had ensured that the government's right to natural resources was protected. The result was evident. The honourable Supreme Court gave the landmark decision in RIL vs RNRL case that the government is the owner of all natural resources. — Veerappa Moily

The Cherokee Nation took a case against Georgia to the US Supreme Court. With Chief Justice John Marshall writing for the majority, the Court ruled in favor of the Cherokees. Jackson ignored the Supreme Court, however, in effect saying that John Marshall had made his decision and Marshall would have to enforce it if he could, although he, Jackson, had an army while Marshall did not. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

It is often forgotten today that Plessy v. Ferguson was not an isolated Supreme Court decision. In case after case, the Court reaffirmed and upheld the ability of states to enforce apartheid. — Erwin Chemerinsky

It's terribly important that we extend the promise of equality that the Supreme Court and that the district court articulated in the DOMA case and in the Perry case to all Americans in all 50 states. — David Boies

You've got Bush and Gore headed to the Supreme Court. You've got George W. Bush's intelligence will be pitted against Al Gore's honesty. This is more like a case for small claims court. — Jay Leno

Congratulations, you may already be a winner! Your case has been selected from hundreds of other appellate cases to be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. — Paul Beatty

Nobody has been arrested on Wall Street for the crash of 2008. They're not paying their fair share of the taxes. And now with the Citizens United case of the Supreme Court, they get to buy politicians up out in the open. — Michael Moore

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. — Alan Dershowitz

But before a computer became an inanimate object, and before Mission Control landed in Houston; before Sputnik changed the course of history, and before the NACA became NASA; before the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka established that separate was in fact not equal, and before the poetry of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech rang out over the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Langley's West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female. — Margot Lee Shetterly

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. — Michael Newdow

I have yet to see a death case among the dozen coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial ... People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

As with the legal case of Irene Morgan, the woman arrested in Virginia's Gloucester County in 1946 for the same infraction, the battle over integration on Montgomery buses eventually won a hearing in front of the Supreme Court. Once again America's highest court ruled segregation illegal. The controversy over the bus boycott vaulted the young Dr. King into the national headlines as the leader of the civil rights movement. Langley — Margot Lee Shetterly

President Bush said yesterday that it was appropriate for the White House to invoke Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers's religion in making the case for her to skeptical conservatives, triggering a debate over what role, if any, her evangelical faith should play in the confirmation battle. — Peter Baker

Perhaps the most striking assault on the foundations of traditional liberties is a little-known case brought to the Supreme Court by the Obama administration, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. — Noam Chomsky

County supervisors relented only after losing their case in the U.S. Supreme Court, choosing finally to reopen the schools rather than face imprisonment. — Isabel Wilkerson

Pointed out that the corporation enjoys the same rights as a living person under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This concept was upheld in 1886 by the Supreme Court in 'Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company' and has been a fact of law ever since. I emphasized to those executives that the corporation should also be required to accept the same responsibilities as those expected of a person; it too should be a good citizen, an honorable, ethical member of the community. In the case of international corporations, that community has to be defined as the world. — John Perkins

2003 case before the Supreme Court in which Nike claimed that it had the First Amendment right to lie in its corporate marketing, a variation on the First Amendment right of free speech. (Except in certain contract and law enforcement/court situations, it's perfectly legal for human persons to lie in the United States. — Thom Hartmann

Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize. — Antonin Scalia

Many American boys that fought in WWII had been sterilized under eugenic laws passed by the the United States Supreme Court under the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell. Over 80,000 Americans would be forcibly sterilized under that legal precedent. Coincidentally, Buck v Bell is also the legal precedent cited in Roe v. Wade, the famous abortion rights case. — A.E. Samaan

I'll now fall back a furlong or two in me chair, while me larned but misguided collagues r-read th' Histhry iv Iceland to show ye how wrong I am. But mind ye, what I 've said goes. I let thim talk because it exercises their throats, but ye 've heard all th' decision on this limon case that'll get into th' fourth reader.' A voice fr'm th' audjeence, ' Do I get me money back ? ' Brown J. : ' Who ar-re ye ? ' Th' Voice : ' Th' man that ownded th' limons.' Brown J. : ' I don't know.' (Gray J., White J., dissentin' an' th' r-rest iv th' birds concurrin' but fr entirely diff'rent reasons.) — Finley Peter Dunne

A news event in 1995 shocked both sides in the culture war controversy. Norma Leah McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" in the famous Supreme Court case of 1973, converted to Christ, got baptized, and joined the pro-life campaign. — Philip Yancey