Felix Frankfurter quotes - page 3

After all, advocates, including advocates for States, are like managers of pugilistic and election contestants, in that they have a propensity for claiming everything. (Felix Frankfurter)
What becomes decisive to a Justice's functioning on the Court in the large area within which his individuality moves is his general attitude toward law, the habits of the mind that he has formed or is capable of unforming, his capacity for detachment, his temperament or training for putting his passion behind his judgment instead of in front of it. The attitudes and qualities which I am groping to characterize are ingredients of what compendiously might be called dominating humility.
Felix Frankfurter
A phrase begins life as a literary expression; its felicity leads to its lazy repetition; and repetition soon establishes it as a legal formula, undiscriminatingly used to express different and sometimes contradictory ideas.
Felix Frankfurter
While it is not always profitable to analogize "fact" to "fiction," La Fontaine's fable of the crow, the cheese, and the fox demonstrates that there is a substantial difference between holding a piece of cheese in the beak and putting it in the stomach.
Felix Frankfurter
Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.
Felix Frankfurter
One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution... But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.
Felix Frankfurter
The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.
Felix Frankfurter
The indispensable judicial requisite is intellectual humility.
Felix Frankfurter
In this Court dissents have gradually become majority opinions.
Felix Frankfurter
Decisions of this Court do not have intrinsic authority.
Felix Frankfurter
The real rulers in Washington are invisible to exercise power from behind the scenes. (Felix Frankfurter)
Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.
Felix Frankfurter
The line must follow some direction of policy, whether rooted in logic or experience. Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines.
Felix Frankfurter
Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep. I can express with very limited adequacy the passionate devotion to this land that possesses millions of our people, born, like myself, under other skies, for the privilege that that this county has bestowed in allowing them to partake of its fellowship.
Felix Frankfurter
Selfishness is the dynamo of our economic system...which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self- expression.
Felix Frankfurter
Ours is an accusational and not an inquisitorial system - a system in which the state must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charge against an accused out of his own mouth.
Felix Frankfurter
It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.
Felix Frankfurter
The Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination.
Felix Frankfurter
Holmes said Emerson had a beautiful voice, and, of course, Holmes had one of the most beautiful voices the Lord ever put into a throat.
Felix Frankfurter
After all, this is the Nation's ultimate judicial tribunal, nor a super-legal-aid bureau.
Felix Frankfurter
In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives. (Felix Frankfurter)
It is true of opinions as of other compositions that those who are seeped in them, whose ears are sensitive to literary nuances, whose antennae record subtle silences, can gather from their contents meaning beyond the words. All this presupposes, of course, a grasp of the nature of the Supreme Court's functions - the scope and limits of its constitutional authority - and often, as well, familiarity with the record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion is under scrutiny.
Felix Frankfurter
In any event, mere speed is not a test of justice. Deliberate speed is. Deliberate speed takes time. But it is time well spent.
Felix Frankfurter
The course of decision in this Court has thus far jealously enforced the principle of a free society secured by the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Its safeguards are not to be worn away by a process of devitalizing interpretation.
Felix Frankfurter
It must take account of what it decrees for today in order that today may not paralyze tomorrow.
Felix Frankfurter