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Quotes by Judge
"There would be nights when I would wake up and couldn't get back to sleep. So I would go downstairs and write. The staff had a pool going on how many pages of typing I would bring in here in the morning."
51
"Ben Franklin may have discovered electricity- but it is the man who invented the meter who made the money."
51
"We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense."
50
"Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from the failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so."
50
"I would not like to be the only woman on the court."
50
"Beware how you take away hope from any human being."
50
"To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him."
50
"Today's Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish."
50
"Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more."
50
"I think the important thing about my appointment is not that I will decide cases as a woman, but that I am a woman who will get to decide cases."
50
"The members of the court were just delighted to have a ninth member - male or female. They were all kind and welcoming."
50
"Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic character."
50
"But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here."
49
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
49
"When I hear of an 'equity' in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room - looking for a black hat - which isn't there."
49
"The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution."
49
"The judicial system is the most expensive machine ever invented for finding out what happened and what to do about it."
49
"Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times."
49
"It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren."
49
"You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations... until they were all litigated out."
49
"Consider the Essay as a political pamphlet on the Revolution side, and the fact that it was the Whig gospel for a century, and you will see its working merit."
49
"Independence doesn't mean you decide the way you want."
48
"Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think."
48
"The attorney general would call at 5 o'clock in the evening and say: 'Tomorrow morning we are going to try to integrate the University of Mississippi. Get us a memo on what we're likely to do, and what we can do if the governor sends the National Guard there.'"
48
"A person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not give rise to probable cause to search that person."
48
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