Arthur Goldberg Quotes

The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches.

If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.

Our country is wounded and bleeding now if we don't know whether or not habeas corpus exists.

It's one of the nice things about this nation that when the Constitution is violated, if it affects you, you can bring a suit.

The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic ….

Of course, the Supreme Court's work is vital not just to a region of the country, but to the whole, vital to the protection of the people's liberties under law and to the continuity of our Constitution, the greatest charter of human liberty the world has ever known.

Ultimately, the reason we have a Constitution, the reason we have separation of powers, the reason we have the Fourteenth Amendment is to provide the courts with the opportunity to override the will of the people when the will of the people discriminates against a segment of our society.

We all need good laws, and an independent, impartial, and efficient judiciary to verify the constitutionality of those laws.

The last stop to protect rights and liberties is the Supreme Court.

I think the Supreme Court does have the authority, which is not used, to declare a blanket right for all people, all adults.

You have a good judicial system in the U.S., as you have learned from the Nixon-Watergate period.

History has shown us that, on extraordinarily rare occasions, it becomes necessary for the federal government to intervene on behalf of individuals whose 14th Amendment rights to legal due process and equal protection may be violated by a state.

Be the responsibility on their heads who raise this novel and extraordinary question of reception, going to the unconstitutional abridgment, as I conceive, of the great right of petition inherent in the People of the United States.

The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.

It's a very frightening time when something as basic as due process is seen as somehow radical.

There is nothing more foreign to a civilised and democratic system than preventive detention.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Are all the laws to go unexecuted and the government itself go to pieces, lest civil liberties be violated?

Any delay in action protecting constitutional rights is justice denied.

No man's life shall be taken away; no man's honor or good name shall be stained; no man's person shall be arrested, restrained, banished, dismembered, or any ways punished; no man shall be deprived of his wife or children; no man's goods or estate shall be taken away from him, or any way damaged, under color of law or countenance of authority, unless it be by the virtue or equity of some express law of the country, warranting the same, established by a General Court and sufficiently published

We believe that all legislative assemblies should confine themselves to constitutional principles; and that all such laws should be implicitly obeyed by every American.

For over 200 years, this nation has adhered to the rule of law with unparalleled success. A shift to a nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised.

The [constitutional] safeguards of "due process of law" and "the equal protection of the laws" summarize the history of freedom of English-speaking peoples running back to Magna Carta and reflected in the constitutional development of our people.

The rights given in the Constitution are given to all people—the most popular and the least popular.

If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.