Elena Kagan Quotes

I firmly believe that the court should take another direction on many of these moral issues that face us.

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.

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

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 best that laws should be so constructed as to leave as little as possible to the decision of those who judge.

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.

Judges have been deciding cases without regard for the law ever since King Solomon ruled that the contending parties should split the baby.

Deciding not to decide is, of course, among the most important things done by the Supreme Court. It takes a lot of doing, but it can be done.

Judges should be in the business of declaring what the law is using the traditional tools of interpretation, rather than pronouncing the law as they might wish it to be in light of their own political views.

A Supreme Court nomination and appointment is not a roving commission to rewrite our laws.

It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.

Much of the Constitution is remarkably simple and straightforward - certainly as compared to the convoluted reasoning of judges and law professors discussing what is called 'Constitutional law,' much of which has no basis in that document....The real question [for judicial nominees] is whether that nominee will follow the law or succumb to the lure of 'a living constitution,' 'evolving standards' and other lofty words meaning judicial power to reshape the law to suit their own personal preferences.

If Americans loved judicial activism, liberals wouldn't be lying about what it is. Judicial activism means making up constitutional rights in order to strike down laws the justices don't like based on their personal preferences. It's not judicial activism to strike down laws because they violate the Constitution.

In my opinion, Chief Justice Roberts put it best during his recent confirmation hearings. And he said, and I quote, "The framers were not the sort of people, having fought a revolution to get the right of self-government to sit down and say, 'Well, let's take all the difficult issues before us and let's have the judges decide them.' That would have been the farthest thing from their mind," however, I fear that the Supreme Court forgets this advice.

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.

Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more, while judges like Ms. Sotomayor are activists. But there is no magic right way to interpret terms like 'free speech' or 'due process' - or potato chip.

If judicial review means anything, it is that judicial restraint does not allow everything.

The overreach of the judiciary can be attributed to, one, the inability of the executive to deliver; and two, the tendency to issue judicial pronouncements for national good. The second element is dangerous because that's the function of the government.

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

I do not believe there are any circumstances in which a judge should consider his or her own values or policy preferences in determining what the law means.

Nationwide injunctions not only allow district courts to wield unprecedented power, they also allow district courts to wield it asymmetrically.

An essential function of the Court is to revise incorrect or outdated prior rulings. Over the last century, the Court has overruled itself about twice a year—roughly the same rate at which the Court has overturned acts of Congress.

Most Americans want judges who will stick to interpreting the law rather than making it.

Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.