Judicial Quotes

Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today. (Felix Frankfurter)
Human life is held in much higher esteem, and the taking of it, whether in private quarrel or by judicial procedure, is looked upon much more seriously than it was formerly. View quote
Elihu Root
The executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid. View quote
Lyn Nofziger
Our Parliamentary system has simply failed to meet the challenge of judicial activism. View quote
Stockwell Day
Illegal immigration is crisis for our country. It is an open door for drugs, criminals, and potential terrorists to enter our country. It is straining our economy, adding costs to our judicial, healthcare, and education systems. View quote
Timothy Murphy
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one. View quote
Alexis de Tocqueville
Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute. View quote
Cicero
There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, "What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused." View quote
Edmund Burke
To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions, - while we, I say, are finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilised societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
I have many things to say. My every right, constitutional, civil, political and judicial has been tramped upon. I have not only had no jury of my peers, but I have had no jury at all. View quote
Susan B. Anthony
Anarchists generally make use of the word "State" to mean all the collection of institutions, political, legislative, judicial, military, financial, etc., by means of which management of their own affairs, the guidance of their personal conduct, and the care of ensuring their own safety are taken from the people and confided to certain individuals, and these, whether by usurpation or delegation, are invested with the right to make laws over and for all, and to constrain the public to respect them, making use of the collective force of the community to this end. (Errico Malatesta)
We are deeply concerned about the situation in Russia with regards to human rights. There are several examples of this situation, such as the new law requiring NGOs to register as "foreign agents”, the law banning homosexual "propaganda”, problems with the rule of law and arbitrary judicial processes, and court rulings against the opposition. View quote
Cecilia Malmström
Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law. View quote
John Marshall
The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damned word he says. View quote
John Marshall
But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions. View quote
Charles Evans Hughes
By my monastic life and vows I am saying No to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socio-economic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace. View quote
Thomas Merton
We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional. View quote
Arlen Specter
It is of course true that any kind of judicial legislation is objectionable on the score of the limited interests which a Court can represent, yet there are wrongs which in fact legislatures cannot be brought to take an interest in, at least not until the Courts have acted. View quote
Learned Hand
Of course, such judicial misconstruction theoretically can be cured by constitutional amendment. But the period of gestation of a constitutional amendment, or of any law reform, is reckoned in decades usually; in years, at least. And, after all, as the Court itself asserted in overruling the minimum-wage cases, it may not be the Constitution that was at fault. View quote
Robert H. Jackson
Not every defeat of authority is a gain for individual freedom, nor every judicial rescue of a convict a victory for liberty. View quote
Robert H. Jackson
Men must always have distinguished (e. g. in judicial matters) between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes and have preferred what one has seen to what he has merely heard from others. But the use of this distinction was originally limited to particular or subordinate matters. As regards the most weighty matters-the first things and the right way-the only source of knowledge was hearsay. (Leo Strauss)
I intend to go right on appointing highly qualified individuals of the highest personal integrity to the bench, individuals who understand the danger of short-circuiting the electoral process and disenfranchising the people through judicial activism. View quote
Ronald Reagan
You have a good judicial system in the U.S., as you have learned from the Nixon-Watergate period. View quote
Sean MacBride
Apparently a great many people have forgotten that the framers of our Constitution went to such great effort to create an independent judicial branch that would not be subject to retaliation by either the executive branch or the legislative branch because of some decision made by those judges. View quote
Sandra Day O'Connor
That's the whole point of... of prosecutorial discretion in the judicial system. It's finding a just outcome in an individual case. View quote
Andrew Thomas