Patricia Millett Quotes

My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.

My job is to write opinions, decide cases and write opinions, not to respond to idiocies.

There's a misconception about Barack Obama as a former constitutional law professor. First of all, there are plenty of professors who are 'legal relativists.' They tend to view legal principles as relative to whatever they're trying to achieve.

The value of a decision as a precedent is very much enhanced by the care with which it has been considered, and if the opinion itself shows that other decisions of the same court, or of other courts upon the same point, have been reviewed and examined, it adds to the value of the decision made on each consideration.

It is the merit of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principles afterward.

You don't want a Supreme Court Justice to rule without knowing the consequence of the ruling in it's legal and non-legal aspects.

If you're a Supreme Court justice, the American people have elevated you to one of the highest offices in the land out of the goodness of their heart and out of deference to your legal wisdom. You get a lifetime appointment, limitless prestige, a great office, and what I have to assume is a very comfortable chair.

You do the best you can, looking at precedent, in trying to anticipate where the Supreme Court is going to draw the balance between the protection of civil liberties and protecting the national security, and in some cases, we guessed wrong.

Appellate advocacy, particularly at the Supreme Court, is really intimate. I mean, you're just a few feet away from the Chief Justice. You know, if you're sweating, they see you.

One of the challenges for lawyers can be explaining, first of all, what the legal issue is and, second, its significance. And both of those are important.

If the case is close, 5-4, and let's say you are on the side that prevailed with the majority, there are not a lot of high-fives and back slaps. There is a moment of quiet, a moment of respect, maybe even sometimes awe in the process. We realize that one of us is going to have to write out a decision which teaches and gives reasons for what we do.

I think justices of all stripes agree that stare decisis is important, but not an inextricable command. It's not inflexible; it's not absolute.

No judge writes on a wholly clean slate.

For a justice of this ultimate tribunal [the U.S. Supreme Court], the opportunity for self-discovery and the occasion for self-revelation is great.

I think whether you are a judge on my court or whether you are a judge on a court of appeals or any court, and lawyers too - and if you're interested in law yourself, you'll be in the same situation - you have a text that isn't clear. If the text is clear, you follow the text. If the text isn't clear, you have to work out what it means. And that requires context.

While Roberts wanted to give the impression he respected the right to privacy and the precedent of Roe vs. Wade, his answers look dangerously similar to the responses (Associate Justice) Clarence Thomas gave senators during his confirmation hearings 14 years ago.

...associational ad hominem attacks remain the left's favorite rhetorical strategy for undermining opponents.

Laws are not made like lime-twigs or nets, to catch everything that toucheth them; but rather like sea-marks, to guide from shipwreck the ignorant passenger.

We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution - not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men.

The authority of the Supreme Court must not be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.

Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."

While appropriation art is critical to art, it's an ambiguous art form in the world of the Supreme Court.

who can Perswade more Powerfully than Poets?

The Supreme Court has only granted citizenship to the children born to legal immigrants, not illegal.