Eric Holder Quotes

We are charged with being a menace to the United States, with being inimical to the Constitution and Government, simply because we have undertaken to legitimately and legally test in the courts, as we have the most perfect right to do, the legality and constitutionality of the law and the commissioners' rulings

When you're allowing the Executive Branch to deprive somebody of a constitutional liberty without any process, that is something that affects all Americans because that's a precedent that can be used.

It urges policy makers and the Supreme Court to make the mistake of curing what could prove to be an isolated problem by disarming the government of its principal weapon to stop future terrorist attacks.

Indictments of any kind are serious. That being said, let's not forget that an indictment is not a conviction. We still have due process in this country.

But one way or another, judges perform a very vital function in our society. They have a risky job and they are entitled to security.

Doing a thing by law, or according to law, is only carrying the law into execution. And punishing a man by, or according to, the sentence or judgment of his peers, is only carrying that sentence or judgment into execution.

The NSA should keep close watch on suspected terrorists to keep our country safe - through programs permitting due process, the naming of a suspect, and oversight by an accountable court.

My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

The constitutional questions are in the first instance not questions of right but questions of might.

An investigation in which the processes of law-making and law-evaluating are submerged entirely in exposure of individual behavior—in adjudication, of a sort, through the exposure process—is outside the constitutional pale of congressional inquiry.

The safety of the state is the highest law.

And let the sheriffs who have arrested them bring them before the justice without any other summons.

The law itself is on trial in every case as well as the cause before it.

The ruling authority is liable to raise a claim which could justify a deviation from the law by saying: The law is supposed to serve the country. The law is merely one consideration, there are additional considerations which are no less important; the good of the country is one such consideration and it could possibly override the law….this is a very dangerous claim. The saying that patriotism is the last refuge of the charlatan is well known. This argument, taken alone, is liable to topple the principle of the legality of government and the rule of law together with it.

Magna Carta decreed that no man would be imprisoned contrary to the law of the land …. Important as the principle was, the Barons of Rynnymede described no specific legal process to enforce it… Gradually the writ of habeas became the means by which the promise of Magna Carta was fulfilled.

Rule of law is based on probable cause.

Our Supreme Court has been very clear that the government can't just simply say something and make it so.

If the 'enemy combatant' cases of Padilla and Hamdi present a clash between liberty and security, each side champions one while giving short shrift to the other.

The EPA must be forbidden to seize or destroy the property of any person until and unless such person has been found guilty of a crime in a court of law.

If you are accused of being associated with terrorism, which could mean you are an Arab- American and you've sent e-mails to a relative in the Middle East, you should get your day in court, and I think you should get a lawyer and a trial, and I think most Americans agree to that.

I have to make the very best judgments I can make in terms of what's gonna keep the American people safe. And is what, what's gonna uphold our Constitution and our traditions of due process.

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

At the end of the day, we must respect the rule of law in respective jurisdictions.

Fundamental protections, the assumption of innocence, trial by jury, and the right to appear before a court have all been sacrificed on the altar of the E.U. superstate.