Henry Clay Quotes

Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority.

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent.

It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.

I also believe that the Supreme Court should be the final arbiter of all federal questions.

Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It's how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.

Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath.

If a Statute make use of a Word the meaning of which is well-known at the Common Law, such word shall be taken in the same Sense it was understood at the common Law.

An investigation in which the processes of law-making and law-evaluating are submerged entirely in exposure of individual behavior—in adjudication, of a sort, through the exposure process—is outside the constitutional pale of congressional inquiry.

The Supreme Court, when it decides a new legal question, does not make illegal what was previously legal; it gives a final authoritative determination of whether an action was legal when it took place.

[In drafting legislation:] There is no magic bullet to prevent judicial mistakes.

All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.

I don't think we can let such an outlandish result stand. I think to do so is to leave every civil official in the land open for somebody to say, "Well I don't like him.

Legislation and adjudication must follow, and conform to, the progress of society.

In this Congress, we are not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past Congress

The judge has no right to divinations of public opinion which run counter to its last formal expressions.

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

I entirely differ with the Government as to the value of precedents. In this case, as in others, precedents are not mere dusty phrases, which do not substantially affect the question before us. A precedent embalms a principle.

A wise king must do less in altering his laws than he may; for new government is ever dangerous …

[…] over the past decade, we’ve argued in court in favor of administrative latitude in decision-making. Now, by asserting the primacy of states rights, we’re flipping that argument on its head. How do we go back to all these cases where we’ve been arguing for executive discretion and say, “Oops, we didn’t mean it”?

What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional?

Courts should interpret the law but leave elected lawmakers to create it.

Supreme Court precedents strictly bind lower courts, but they do not bind the Supreme Court itself. Indeed, 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.

As a general rule, I do not think judges should consider current societal preferences when ruling on constitutional challenges.

Judges should always behave judicially by adjudicating, never politically by legislating. I leave policy to policymakers. They're preeminent, but they're not omnipotent. In other words, lawmakers decide if laws pass, but judges decide if laws pass muster.