Bill Clinton Quotes

All judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial.

If a judge does his job right, you [the observer] will never know how he personally feels about the policies he may have to rule on.

The judge may not … express his … personal beliefs ... as to what is right or just

You can have many different selection systems, but the bottom line has to be a system that, once the judge takes office that judge will feel that he or she is to decide the case without reference to the popular thing or the popular will of the moment.

I don't suggest we ought to be able to pressure judges, but we ought to be able to criticize [them] when we think they've made a mistake

Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.

A judge's duty is to grant justice, but his practice is to delay it: even those judges who know their duty adhere to the general practice.

It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.

Judges ... rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.

A judge who likes every opinion he reaches is a bad judge.

The worst thing you want is a willy-nilly judge who is swayed by the political whims of the era or the time. What you want is a judge who is thinking about what he or she is doing and is thinking about it in a principled way.

I don't know how a judge can concentrate on being fair and impartial when he or she is faced with possible jail time for making a decision that others deem incorrect.

The judiciary must be independent, impartial and autonomous to impart justice to the people and establish rule of law in the society.

Republicans say to Democrats, “Your judges are political activists.” The Democrats respond to the Republicans, “Your judges are political activists.” So the public thinks that all judges are political activists and just politicians in robes. This is very worrying.

The state in commissioning its judges has commanded them to judge, but neither in constitution nor in statute has it formulated a code to define the manner of their judging.

If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.

Our system presumes that there are certain principles that are more important than the temper of the times. And you must have a judge who is detached, who is independent, who is fair, who is committed only to those principles, and not public pressures of other sort.

We should trust judges to be independent, investigators to be independent.

A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge... stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands.

We need a Supreme Court justice who will restore fairness, balance, and independence to the highest level of the judiciary. Based on his record, I do not believe Gorsuch would be that kind of justice.

Practicing in the trial work trenches of the law, I saw, too, that when we judges don our robes, it doesn't make us any smarter, but it does serve as a reminder of what's expected of us: Impartiality and independence, collegiality and courage.

It's simply not bias for a judge to explain her reasoning in a dissent.

The truth is that the D.C. Circuit is an admirably nonideological court that applies principles of administrative law evenhandedly.

I think that the legitimacy of the court would be undermined in any case if the court made a decision based on its perception of public opinion.

I'm a judge. It seemed to me that it was critical to try to take action to stem the criticism and help people understand that in the constitutional framework, it's terribly important not to have a system of retaliation against decisions people don't like.