Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes

If you are a friend of the Constitution as I am, I hope you will consider engaging me in the topics of my posts whether you agree or disagree with my position on a particular subject.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

My feeling is that the judge has a responsibility to the Constitution first, precedent second. Precedent is one factor. It is not the only factor. If it was the only factor, then, you know, we wouldn't have had Roe vs. Wade. We wouldn't have had Griswold. We wouldn't have had Lawrence. We wouldn't have had all these cases which the Left love.

It is time... to end the long-standing and unproductive methodological debate over 'originalism' versus 'dynamism' or 'evolution' and focus instead on how, as a substantive matter, we should interpret the Constitution in the twenty-first century, and what it has to say on questions unimaginable to our eighteenth-century Framers.

I think that he was responsible for putting the flesh and bones on the Constitution.

The framers of the constitution were very literate men and they could write very well. When they wrote that “Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” they meant NO LAW. If they had wanted to have some laws or an emergency law, they would not have written, “NO LAW.” They were expert at the English language.

Do judges follow the Constitution? Well, Yes and No. They follow the Constitution as they understand it.

The real difficulty is not with the Constitution but with the judges who interpret it.

People seem to be concerned about the Constitution of the United States only when it pertains to something that is of concern to them.

I consider ... the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.

David Addington does not believe in the Constitution

The words of the Constitution ... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.

I think it is up to the judge to say what the Constitution provided, even if what it provided is not the best answer, even if you think it should be amended. If that's what it says, that's what it says.

I think it makes no difference whether or not I endorse it. The Constitution is as the Supreme Court interprets it and I must conform to this and do my best to see that it is carried out in this country.

What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional?

Ours is the job of interpreting the Constitution. And that document isn't some inkblot on which litigants may project their hopes and dreams.

Anybody who questions the validity of the Constitution, whether it works in the modern era, should never be president.

My touchstone for every question is the Constitution.

I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.

True fans of the Constitution, like true fans of the national pastime, acknowledge the critical role of human judgment in making tough calls. We don't expect flawless interpretation. We expect good faith. We demand honesty.

I maintain that the House is bound by the Constitution to receive the petitions; after which, it will take such method of deciding upon them as reason and principle shall dictate.

If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless.

Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves. As the central preoccupations of an era make their way into the legal system, the Supreme Court eventually weighs in, and nine lawyers in robes become oracles of our national identity.

No one familiar with the common law of England can read the Constitution of the United States without observing the great desire of the Convention which framed that instrument to make it conform as far as possible with that law.

We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans.