Molly Ivins Quotes

In my lifetime, it's the Supreme Court, not Congress, that integrated our public schools, that allowed people of different races to marry, and established the principle that our government should respect the value of privacy of American families. These decisions are the legacy of justices who chose to expand American freedom.

The Senator’s objections to “legislating morality,” his criticisms of the Supreme Court, and his advocacy of “states’ rights” all became the shorthand for an anti-civil rights appeal -- and were clearly understood as such by voters in the North and South

Had it not been for James Meredith, who was willing to risk his life, the University of Mississippi would still be all white.

(Referring to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:) A fine, honest gentleman with whom I agree with on almost nothing.

All the people of the South are in favor of segregation. And Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, we are going to maintain segregated schools.

School desegregation cases overturned not only the constitutional precedents built up over three quarters of a century but the social structure of an entire region ... Desegregation decrees have all the qualities of social legislation ...

Plessy v. Ferguson was a perversion of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Members of the Supreme Court have lifetime tenures because they're not supposed to do politics.

The country is yearning for a change. I'd rather take my chances on somebody new, particularly with regard to the Supreme Court.

I never want to be in the business of predicting what the U.S. Supreme Court will do.

An essential function of the Court is to revise incorrect or outdated prior rulings. Over the last century, the Court has overruled itself about twice a year—roughly the same rate at which the Court has overturned acts of Congress.

Supreme Court precedents strictly bind lower courts, but they do not bind the Supreme Court itself. Indeed, an essential function of the Court is to revise incorrect or outdated prior rulings. Over the last century, the Court has overruled itself about twice a year—roughly the same rate at which the Court has overturned acts of Congress.

It took the United States Army to get one Negro into the University of Mississippi; it took troops to get a few Negroes in the white schools at Little Rock and another dozen places in the South.

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

I stated at Justice [John] Roberts' hearing, the court's injected itself into many of the political debates of our day.

Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right.

[Nominee for the Supreme Court] will be something designed to very much please conservatives, even as they may get a little nervous on some of what he's talking about in terms of ObamaCare and infrastructure.

I'm really proud of this Supreme Court and the way they've been dealing with the issue of First Amendment political speech.

In 1957, when I was in second grade, black children integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched it on TV. All of us watched it. I don't mean Mama and Daddy and Rocky. I mean all the colored people in America watched it, together, with one set of eyes.

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

I grew up in the era of the desegregation program. I actually got bussed to a predominately white high school. I didn't have a choice.

I was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.

We have differing views on law, politics and religion. But I have yet to meet a Scalia clerk who was not grateful to the man who taught us, shaped us, and launched us into our lives in the law. Justice Scalia's passing leaves a giant void in the court and in the intellectual discourse over the law.

Through the selection of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Damon Leichty, President Trump has already remade the judiciary, moving our country away from activist judges and toward individuals who will uphold the Constitution.

Even in the '80s and '90s, many white Southerners were still bitter about court decisions that required racial integration of the schools. It wasn't that they were outwardly opposed to white and black people attending school together, it was that the rulings threatened their proud identity as independent Southerners.