Photo: Sam HowzitTurning from celebrity culture to a weightier arena, I am again seeking suggestions of notable quotations from United States Supreme Court decisions of recent years. Are there any worthy successors to the eloquent justices of the past, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Robert H. Jackson?
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Justice Stevens: “[t]he endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”
Bush v. Gore (dissent)
Nothing could be more contrary to contemporary standards of decency or more shocking to the conscience than to execute a person who is actually innocent.
- Blackmun
TINKER ET AL. v. DES MOINES INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT ET AL.
February 24, 1969
It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.
I believe this was from the oral argument rather than the decision, but I like this one:
“Sometimes you don’t know if you’re Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.”
– Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in the case Planned Parenthood v Casey.
“Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep’s clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.” – Scalia dissenting, Morrison v. Olson
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women;
when it dies there, no Constitution, no court,
can even do much to help it.” — Learned Hand, Judge from Second Circuit Court of Appeals
Our current Chief Justice couldn’t even administer the Presidential swearing-in oath. To expect anything from him is probably about as likely as the Cubs winning the world series. Among the other justices, only the black one has ever said anything memorable, something about long john silver? Cheers!
“The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”
-Justice Morrison Remick Waite (pronounced before the beginning of argument in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad – 1886)
The court reporter duly entered into the summary record of the Court’s findings:
“The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”