Arthur Hertzberg Quotes

A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law.

I do not allow myself to be moved by anything except the law. If there has been a mistake in the law, or if I think there has beenperjury or injustice, I will weigh the petition most carefully, but I do not permit myself to be moved by more harrowing details, and I try to treat each case as if I was reviewing it or hearing it for the first time from the bench.

The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.

I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.

Any successful nominee should possess both the temperament to interpret the law and the wisdom to do so fairly. The next Supreme Court Justice should have a record of protecting individual rights and a strong willingness to put aside any political agenda.

Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each successive wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.

Judges shall judge justly, according to the written law and not according to their own judgment.

We do not sit like a kadi under a tree dispensing justice according to considerations of individual expediency

Judges should follow the law in deciding cases - not their own values, good or bad.

Lady Justice doesn't have empathy for anyone. She rules strictly based upon the law, and that's really the only way that our system can function properly under the Constitution.

My approach to deciding cases is I look at the law, I look at the facts, and I do my best to apply the law to the facts and make a decision based on the law and the facts.

My judicial philosophy is straightforward.

Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice.

If the law doesn't apply equally to everybody, then you don't really have a system of law.

The acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice.

Let's not interfere with justice... Let's let justice speak.

The glorious uncertainty of the law was a thing well known and complained of, by all ignorant people, but all learned gentleman considered it as its greatest excellency.

The courtroom is a quiet place, Judge Roberts, where you park your political ideology, and you call the balls and you call the strikes.

But they who give straight judgements to strangers and to those of the land and do not transgress what is just, for them the city flourishes and its people prosper.

More law, less justice.

The Supreme Court needs jurists, not politicians.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

'Fairness' can be an important quality for legislators to consider when they are passing public policies. But it is a subjective standard. And it has no place among judges on a court - whose duty is to dispassionately judge a law's constitutionality.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

A first principle of Anglo-American jurisprudence is that the ends do not justify the means.