Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

Judges are real people with real-world experiences and backgrounds. We cannot expect them to erase their experiences and backgrounds from the mindset that informs their judicial decision-making.

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

We don't pay judges to think; we pay judges to rule on the law.

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

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.

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.

If the courts are making the decisions, it matters who the judge is and, of course, people are concerned with what is the bottom line.

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.

I own that it is a good deal of a mystery to me how judges, of all persons in the world, should put their faith in dicta. A brief experience on the bench was enough to reveal to me all sorts of cracks and crevices and loopholes in my own opinions when picked up a few months after delivery and reread with due contrition.

It is impossible for human beings not to view something subjectively.

To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.

It's important not to get into the business of characterizing judges based on one decision they make

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.

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

I certainly would not vote against a particular judge already in office because of a decision in a case. You may not agree with a judge's decision, but the judge must act within the law.

The fascination about being a judge is the same about the duty of being a judge, and that is to ask yourself, Why am I about to rule the way I am about to rule? You must always ask yourself that question.

My personal opinions on any subject are really not relevant, not important, and to the extent that I might inject them, I am acting improperly as either a District Court judge or as an appellate court judge.

Most of us tend to be swayed by what we read. Judges are not superhuman. They, too, are mortals. This is why they have to be exceptionally careful in rendering decisions, which cause unintended consequences.

No judge writes on a wholly clean slate.

Good judges are always open to the possibility of changing their minds based on the next brief that they read, or the next argument that's made by an attorney who's appearing before them, or a comment that is made by a colleague during the conference on the case when the judges privately discuss the case.

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.

Disparities in sentencing often resulted from unconscious biases of judges,

As a general rule, I do not think it appropriate for judges to heap either praise or censure upon a legislative measure that comes before them, lest it be thought that their validation, invalidation, or interpretation of it is driven by their desire to expand or constrict what they personally approve or disapprove as a matter of policy.

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.