James Madison Quotes

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

People expect that the law will be what the Supreme Court told them what the law was going to be.

The Supreme Court, when it decides a new legal question, does not make illegal what was previously legal; it gives a final authoritative determination of whether an action was legal when it took place.

[In drafting legislation:] There is no magic bullet to prevent judicial mistakes.

The rules of legal interpretation are rules of common sense, adopted by the courts in the construction of the laws.

We are too apt, in estimating a law passed at a remote period, to combine in our consideration, all the subsequent events which have had an influence upon it, instead of confining ourselves (which we ought to do) to the existing circumstances at the time of its passing.

The law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it — very loose, the line of the law — so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always — short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder — safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.

It is better that the law should be certain than that every judge should speculate upon improvements in it.

It seems to me that stare decisis ought to be applied even to the doctrine of stare decisis, and I confess never to have heard of this new, keep-what-you-want-and-throw-away-the-rest version.

Bad facts make bad law.

Courts do not make the law.

It is not the responsibility of the judiciary to amend poor legislative drafting, even if judges would personally prefer a different outcome than what is required by a statute's text.

Judges should interpret the law, not make it.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

When the code of laws is once fixed, it should be observed in the literal sense, and nothing more is left to the judge than to determine whether an action is or is not conformable to the written law.

All I can say is that with business and the interest of any party before me, I will consider and apply the law as it is written by Congress and informed by precedent.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases.

If a Statute make use of a Word the meaning of which is well-known at the Common Law, such word shall be taken in the same Sense it was understood at the common Law.

Measured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication. Doctrinal limbs, too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable.

Constitutions are interpreted differently from statutes.

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.

The greatest defect in legislative history is its illegitimacy. We are governed not by legislative intention but by laws… the text should control even if the Congress intended a different result

Judges have been deciding cases without regard for the law ever since King Solomon ruled that the contending parties should split the baby.

Whenever the words of a law will bear two meanings, one of which will give effect to the law, and the other will defeat it, the former must be supposed to have been intended by the Legislature, because they could not intend that meaning, which would defeat their intention, in passing that law; and in a statute, as in a will, the intention of the party is to be sought after