Robert Bork Quotes

Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each successive wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.

The [Supreme] Court did not interpret the Constitution—the court amended it.

If the Constitution, as interpreted by the Court, prevents the proper solution of our social and economic problems, should we do something to the Constitution to meet the difficulty, or should we do something to the Supreme Court?

There is only one excuse for packing the [Supreme] Court and that is to change it.

The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left.

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

If the people desire changes in the highest judicial tribunal in the land, the people can speak with their power to amend their own Constitution.

Our fundamental instrument of government [the Constitution] is an evolving document.

Constitutional reform is exasperatingly slow.

This [nullification] is a normal and traditional American method of circumventing the inflexibility of the Constitution. When the Constitution has come into conflict with the living needs of the nation, and when amendment was impossible, the method of changing the Constitution has been to change it and then get the very human Supreme Court to sanction it.

I do not believe it is the function of the judiciary to step in and change the law because the times have changed.

Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right. ... But in cases involving the Federal Constitution, where correction through legislative action is practically impossible, this Court has often overruled its earlier decisions. ... This is strikingly true of cases under the due process clause.

What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by 5 to 4 Supreme Court judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the States to equal 5 judges.

In this Court dissents have gradually become majority opinions.

Israel's Supreme Court is one of the best in the world, and I think that it should stay that way; I don't want to weaken it, I just want to change its approach.

I would love to get Chief Justice John Roberts for an interview. I think that would be fascinating, I think that Supreme Court nominees should do more interviews.

Of course, such judicial misconstruction theoretically can be cured by constitutional amendment. But the period of gestation of a constitutional amendment, or of any law reform, is reckoned in decades usually; in years, at least. And, after all, as the Court itself asserted in overruling the minimum-wage cases, it may not be the Constitution that was at fault.

In a number of cases dissenting opinions have in time become the law.

The president typically never does comment on anything involving the Supreme Court cases, Supreme Court ruling, or Supreme Court finding, typically.

Roosevelt got a chance to name an amazing nine justices of the Supreme Court. He was not namby-pamby on this question. He wanted people who shared his views, he wanted liberals, and he wanted lots of them.

Over the course of 19 years on the Supreme Court, I learned some lessons about the Constitution of the United States.

Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.

The nation will be shaped for decades by decisions that are made by President Bush and the Senate about the future of the Supreme Court.

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.

The judicial power of every well-constituted government must be coextensive with the legislative, and must be capable of deciding every judicial question which grows out of the Constitution and laws.