Ajit Pai Quotes

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

Were I confirmed as a judge, I would decide cases according to the rule of law beginning to end.

“Hard cases make bad law” is another way the tragic vision has been expressed. To help some hard-pressed individual or group whose case is before them, judges may bend the law to arrive at a more benign verdict in that particular case—but at the cost of damaging the whole consistency and predictability of the law, on which millions of other people depend, and on which ultimately the freedom and safety of a whole society depend.

Before we condemn the jurors who acquitted George Zimmerman, we should remember that they were asked to do something extraordinary. They were asked to listen to the facts and apply the law to the best of their ability in a case the world was watching.

I'm duty-bound to follow the law and apply to the law to the facts as I find them.

Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.

The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges’ views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice.

Though in many other countries everything is left in the breast of the Judge to determine, yet with us he is only to declare and pronounce, not to make or new-model the law.

The press will commonly reflect (or even try to create) the view that the end justifies the means. Those of us dedicated to the law must stand before these gales.

I don’t like the death penalty but it was the law in Ohio. Therefore as a prosecutor I sought the death penalty and as a judge I imposed the death penalty. It was the law and you have to obey the law.

The judge has no right to divinations of public opinion which run counter to its last formal expressions.

Bad facts make bad law.

I certainly would not vote against a particular judge already in office because of a decision in a case. You may not agree with a judge's decision, but the judge must act within the law.

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.

It is questionless desirable in all ordinary cases, wherever positive law is established, to restrain ourselves within the letter of that law and to allow the criminal all the benefit, if benefit to him shall result, of any evasion or escape that the law shall afford him.

If we lived in a world where we had the rule of a judge, rather than the rule of law, you would have seen an absolute sea change, an avulsive change in the law as it was interpreted, applied and rendered by our court.

I have no hesitation in applying a law regardless of what I might think about it.

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.

I think judges have to have the ability to put aside their personal views and rule on the facts of the case with fidelity to the law and the Constitution.

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.

It's not so much the attorney general's job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our jobs and enforce laws effectively as we're able.

I have had to make a decision I may not agree with, but I am required to follow the letter of the law. It is not my job to think what is best... My responsibility is to decide what the law says and to decide to the law.

Too many of us had to suffer at the hands of a judiciary so independent that it often acted independently of both the basic principles of jurisprudence and the very constitution it swore to uphold and protect.

The science doesn't prove Common Core's effective. So I guess what I mean is science is an essential part of any decision-making process, and so is public involvement. And in the long-term, you lose legitimacy and power if you don't directly engage with the public.

As a general rule, I do not think judges should consider current societal preferences when ruling on constitutional challenges.