To threaten the institution is to threaten fair administration of justice and protection of liberty.
The advantages? Exercise, no parking problems, gas prices, it’s fun. An automobile is expensive. You have to find a place to park and it’s not fun. So why not ride a bicycle? I recommend it.
The best clue to what a person thinks is what he says.
You can have many different selection systems, but the bottom line has to be a system that, once the judge takes office that judge will feel that he or she is to decide the case without reference to the popular thing or the popular will of the moment.
This understanding, underlying constitutional interpretation since the New Deal, reflects the Constitution’s demands for structural flexibility sufficient to adapt substantive laws and institutions to rapidly changing social, economic, and technological conditions.
I mean, there are lots of people who get married who can’t have children. To take a state that does allow adoption and say-there, what is the justification for saying no gay marriage? Certainly not the one you said, is it?
People have to be educated and they have to stick to it. If people lose that respect, an awful lot is lost.
You will read in the newspaper more often about federal courts, but the law that affects people, the trials that affect human beings are by and large in the state courts.
It doesn’t help to fight crime to put people in prison who are innocent.
Independence doesn’t mean you decide the way you want.
Every citizen has to figure out what kind of government he or she wants.
Nobody wants a judge to be subject to the political whim of the moment.
There are loads of countries that have nice written constitutions like ours. But there aren’t loads of countries where they’re followed.
It’s important to every American that the law protect his or her basic liberty.
And the problem is once you get into this campaign business and begin to have a lot of money, then the person on the bench begins to think – what’s going to happen if I decide the case this way or that way?
We can speak about the institution, but ultimately the bar is the group that both is in touch with the public on the one hand and understands the judicial institution on the other.
Judges are appointed often through the political process.
As we have seen, despite holdings by the European Court of Justice that EU law trumps member-state law, many national courts have insisted on retaining the final word as to whether a rule of European law conforms to their own constitutional requirements. And if this is so among nations committed to a measure of political and economic union, how much less likely is foreign law to impinge upon the sovereignty of one not so encumbered?
Open mindedness is not blank mindedness, open mindedness is being prepared to change your view when presented with a better set of proofs and arguments.