Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes

I believe you [Samuel Alito] and others would look and say that the role of the courts is limited and it's not to decide political matters.

As a judge, it is not my function to develop public policy.

The proper role of the judiciary is one of interpreting and applying the law, not making it.

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

Judges are required by our democratic system not to overstep their positions to become policy makers or super-legislators.

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

Supreme Court nominees should know without any doubt that their job is not to impose their own personal opinions of what is right and wrong, but to say what the law is, rather than what they personally think the law ought to be.

Judges need to restrict themselves to the proper resolution of the case before them. They need to avoid the temptation to set broad policy.

Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It's how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.

I wouldn't approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. Judges can't rely on what's in their heart. They don't determine the law. Congress makes the law. The job of a judge is to apply the law.

What I don't like is judges legislating from the bench. And as president of the United States, I will appoint justices who uphold the Constitution and who don't see themselves as a super legislature.

Judges tend to support the current government not because they necessarily share its views, but because they wish to avoid a worse outcome in which the Congress overrides their decisions.

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.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them.

I do not believe it is the function of the judiciary to step in and change the law because the times have changed.

Federal judges will never be so wild, so absurd, so mad as to pretend that they are superior to the legislative power of America.

This Court seems incapable of admitting that some matters - any matters - are none of its business.

If judges were just secret legislators, declaring not what the law is but what they would like it to be, the very idea of a government by the people and for the people would be at risk. And those who came to court would live in fear, never sure exactly what governs them except the judge’s will. As Alexander Hamilton explained, "liberty can have nothing to fear from” judges who apply the law, but liberty "ha[s] every thing to fear" if judges try to legislate too.

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

Judicial activism must be lessened, and the judiciary should do its work and let politicians work.

As Alexander Hamilton said in 'The Federalist Papers,' law is about the exercise of judgment and not will. Judicial activism is best understood as substituting judicial opinion for the command of law. The law is not an infinitely malleable tool.

Courts do not make the law.

Democracy demands that judges confine themselves to a narrow sphere of influence - that is why the late Alexander Bickel called the judiciary the 'Least Dangerous Branch.' In a world governed by a proper conception of their role, judges don't play at being legislators - they leave that job to our elected representatives.

Judges should always behave judicially by adjudicating, never politically by legislating. I leave policy to policymakers. They're preeminent, but they're not omnipotent. In other words, lawmakers decide if laws pass, but judges decide if laws pass muster.

There's no such thing as judicial supremacy.