Thomas Hardiman Quotes

The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.

The glorious uncertainty of the law was a thing well known and complained of, by all ignorant people, but all learned gentleman considered it as its greatest excellency.

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

A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law.

I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.

My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.

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.

It is very important to know the law, but it is more important to know the judge

There is not, in the whole compass of human affairs, so noble a spectacle as that which is displayed in the progress of jurisprudence; where we may contemplate the cautious and unwearied exertion of a succession of wise men, through a long course of ages, withdrawing every case, as it arises, from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible rules.

We do not sit like a kadi under a tree dispensing justice according to considerations of individual expediency

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

On the whole, we think of our consumers - other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it's better to have it clearer than confusing.

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.

As I understand, the role of the federal judiciary, the role of our court system, is to provide justice.

Judges should decide legal disputes. Judges should not make law.

A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.

Judges should interpret the law, not make it.

The rules and principles of case law have never been treated as final truths but as working hypotheses, continually retested in those great laboratories of the law, the courts of justice. Every new case is an experiment, and if the accepted rule which seems applicable yields a result which is felt to be unjust, the rule is reconsidered.

If the law doesn't apply equally to everybody, then you don't really have a system of law.

Any rule, not existing in the nature of things, or that is not permanent, universal and inflexible in its application, is no law, according to any correct definition of the term law.

Law professors like Obama tend to view the law as one means to an end, and others, like myself, tend to view it as the end itself.

The judicial system is the most expensive machine ever invented for finding out what happened and what to do about it.

The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me.

But, I know enough people in that court, through the years, to know one thing: There's always somebody who surprises you, who rises above what they thought they appointed him for, and stays with the separation of powers, and with the right of the law to decide.

What I really like about law is that it's not an endless discourse like history or philosophy. In law, there comes a point where problems have to be solved, and cases decided.