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Quotes by Judge
"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."
35
"Beware how you take away hope from any human being."
35
"I could see flames from the windows of my chambers. For the next three or four days we had major rioting here in Washington and I stayed at the court day and night."
35
"Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more."
35
"Before this distinguished assembly and the world, the bells today proclaim the joyous tidings of the completion of this quietly soaring tower."
35
"Young women today often have very little appreciation for the real battles that took place to get women where they are today in this country. I don't know how much history young women today know about those battles."
35
"Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence."
35
"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."
35
"It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself."
34
"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."
34
"The fact is, we are a nine-member court that sits on cases."
34
"Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt to surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, though the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen."
34
"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."
34
"Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times."
34
"When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free."
34
"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."
33
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
33
"I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life."
33
"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so."
33
"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."
33
"In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education."
33
"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."
33
"While democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty."
33
"We may have lured judges into roaming at large in the constitutional field."
33
"The members of the court were just delighted to have a ninth member - male or female. They were all kind and welcoming."
33
"In recent years, research into the prevention and treatment of arthritis has led to measures that successfully reduce pain and improve the quality of life for millions."
33
"We are selected, but I grew up in California and in San Francisco and there was a system of electing judges."
33
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