Ted Kennedy Quotes

The Supreme Court has always been the last bastion of the protection of our freedoms.

Whether interpreting the Constitution or filling in the blanks of a law or a regulation, every word of the court's opinion can widen or narrow our rights as Americans and either protect us or leave us more vulnerable to any winds that blow.

The last stop to protect rights and liberties is the Supreme Court.

Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has been the critical decisive vote on many issues that go to the heart of who we are as a nation.

In the job of a member of the Supreme Court of the United States, you're going to make decisions. You'll say things that some people are going to love them, some people are going to hate them. It's just part of the job. And so I respect the right of individuals to have strongly held opinions and to express those opinions in our country.

Being a justice. If you love law the way I do... you're given the job of a lifetime... you're permitted to address the most important legal questions of the country, and sometimes the world. And in doing so, you make a difference in people's lives.

Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.

The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges’ views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice.

In the fifteen years since Earl Warren became Chief Justice, the Court has brought about more social change than most Congresses and most presidents.

The Supreme Court is never very far from public opinion.

The Supreme Court overrules, distinguishes, and upholds prior precedents. Sometimes it ignores them. But it does not - cannot - 'defy' them.

What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional?

What many people, I think, don't really understand is how much their rights really turn on the interpretation of the Supreme Court.

When did it become the law of the land that the Supreme Court has the final say on anything? They cannot have the final say on anything. The American people have the final say on anything.

Through its interpretation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court hugely shapes the fabric of our society for us and for future generations.

The people can change Congress but only God can change the Supreme Court.

But I am pro-life and will intend, if I’m president of the United States, to encourage pro-life policies. [...] And I hope to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will follow the law and the constitution. And it would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue.

If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: 'The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,' I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.

Our country is being radically altered, step by step, by Justices who are not following any law.

It is commonly believed that the rights of the American people come from the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When it comes to the Supreme Court, the American people have only two times when they have any input into how our Constitution is interpreted and who will have the privilege to do so.First, we elect a president who has the power to nominate justices to the Supreme Court.Second, the people, acting through their representatives in the Senate, have their say on whether the president's nominee should in fact be confirmed.

I'm concerned about the role the court will play in protecting individual rights in this and the next century.

Activist Supreme Courts are not new. The Dred Scott decision in 1856, imposing slavery in free territories; the Plessy decision in 1896, imposing segregation on a private railroad company; the Korematsu decision in 1944, upholding Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens, mostly Japanese Americans; and the Roe decision in 1973, imposing abortion on the entire nation; are examples of the consequences of activist Courts and justices.

Even one justice can advance or reverse the progress of our journey.

The Supreme Court is the last refuge in America for our rights and liberties.