Aristotle Quotes

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.

Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than the torture of laws.

Judges should interpret the law, not make it.

What five members of the Supreme Court say the law is may be something vastly different from what Congress intended the law to be.

Judges ought to remember that their office is Ius dicere and not Ius dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.

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

People expect that the law will be what the Supreme Court told them what the law was going to be.

It is better that the law should be certain than that every judge should speculate upon improvements in it.

For it is always to be remembered that it is the spirit with which a constitution is in practice administered, that is the great point of consequence, far more than the letter of the law

Courts do not make the law.

It is not the responsibility of the judiciary to amend poor legislative drafting, even if judges would personally prefer a different outcome than what is required by a statute's text.

In the legislative branch, you make the laws... and our role as judges is to interpret the law, not to inject our own policy preferences. So our task is to give an honest construction to what laws are passed by the Legislature.

Judges should interpret the laws according to what they say, not according to what the judges wish they would say. Judges are supposed to interpret the laws; they are not supposed to make them.

For those whose exclusive norm of constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed, 'Brown' must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision.

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.

Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so.

The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.

In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.

Judges who take the law into their own hands, who make up constitutional 'rights' in order to strike down laws they oppose, undermine the people's right to have their values shape public policy and define the culture.

You want to know what judicial activism is? Judicial activism is judges imposing their policy preferences on the words of the Constitution.

Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.

Remember, that his duty and his business is, not to make the law but to interpret and apply it

The courts are under the Constitution, not over it.

The Supreme Court is our ultimate check and balance.