Joseph R. Biden Jr. Quotes

If Democrats get another Elena Kagan, who has no business being there, if they get another Senorita Sonia Sotomayor, if they get another Stephen Breyer, who may be one of the absolute worst, Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg, if they get another one of these, then we don't have a Supreme Court, folks.

In recent years, even as the court has become an increasingly political body, the Senate is not focused on preserving any perceived ideological balance when Democrat presidents have appointed people to the court.

Many voters think about the makeup of the Supreme Court when they are choosing a president. The justices deal not only with constitutional issues but also with social issues that were unknown to the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution more than 200 years ago.

History will record that the Citizens United decision is one of the worst in the history of our country.

We need to consider nominations as thoroughly and carefully as the American people deserve. No one is entitled to a free pass to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

I think my independence was a big help to getting Judges Roberts and Alito confirmed, and I think that's recognized.

I just have that sense this is the reason we got Sandra Day O'Connor on the Court in the first place is because Ronald Reagan was running for President.

The president appoints the judges. Your lives and your children's lives can change by all of these appellate court judges who will be appointed who will reinterpret laws, and things can change.

Canada's top judges have become the supreme rulers of the land, and that has turned the [Supreme Court justice] selection process into a back-room brawl between competing interests.

The Supreme Court has made itself into a political institution … It has become a political prize and a political position.

I was driven years ago to the conclusion that political considerations had not hurt the character of appointments here [the supreme court].

For roughly two hundred years, politics has influenced dramatically the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices. Presidents routinely have selected nominees to the Court based on political considerations…

Wouldn't a judge be a "rotter," if he got an appointment for the Supreme Court bench from a district leader for 14 years at a salary of $25,000 a year and then just said "Thank you"?

The most misguided, naïve, uninformed, egregious decision of the United States Supreme Court … in the 21st century. To somehow view money as not having a corrupting effect on an election flies in the face of reality. I just think that just one of the five had run for county sheriff. I guarantee you … there will be scandals. There is too much money washing around political campaigns today, and it will take scandals and maybe the Supreme Court will go back and revisit this issue

The Democrats' drive to defeat Neil Gorsuch is the latest battle in a 50-year war for control of the Supreme Court - a war that began with a conspiracy against Richard Nixon by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice Abe Fortas and Lyndon Johnson.

If the need for comprehensive campaign finance reform was not already clear, the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United permitting unlimited corporate and union spending in campaigns certainly made it so in 2010.

If the publicly passed campaign finance laws had not been struck down by the Supreme Court, Club for Growth Action would be illegal, and Heritage Action wouldn't have the SuperPAC threat to back up its small ad purchases.

Millions upon millions of secret spending by the fossil fuel industry that was unleashed by the disastrous 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision - this money not only fuels the campaigns of many candidates; it also represents a threat to those who don't toe the polluter line on climate change.

Installing an activist liberal majority on the Supreme Court will put religious liberties at risk for generations to come.

But I am pro-life and will intend, if I’m president of the United States, to encourage pro-life policies. [...] And I hope to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will follow the law and the constitution. And it would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue.

[Donald] Trump has put forward a list of people he would like to see on the Supreme Court, whom the Kochs would be very happy with too. So it's not all bad for them.

It's going to mean four or five justices, super liberal, placed on the Supreme Court. Our country will never, ever be the same.

America is just so imperative that we have the right justices.

What the Supreme Court did in Citizens United is to say to these same billionaires and the corporations they control: 'You own and control the economy, you own Wall Street, you own the coal companies, you own the oil companies. Now, for a very small percentage of your wealth, we're going to give you the opportunity to own the United States Government.' This is the essence of what Citizens United is all about - and that's why it must be overturned.

The Supreme Court nominations [example]. I mean, the fact that Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republicans, was able to just stop a nomination almost a year before the next election and really not pay a political price for it, that's a sign that the incentives for politicians in this town to be so sharply partisan have gotten so outta hand that we're weakening ourselves.