Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Absent scandal, a federal judge can serve for decades on the bench, underscoring the importance of appointing judges who have a proper understanding of their constitutional role.

It (lifetime appointment of judges) is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.

Federal judges may long outlast the Presidents who appoint them.

When Obama took office, Republican appointees controlled ten of the thirteen circuit courts of appeals; Democratic appointees now constitute a majority in nine circuits. Because federal judges have life tenure, nearly all of Obama's judges will continue serving well after he leaves office.

People whose terms go for five years or longer, like FCC commissioners. That's a higher standard. Then district judges, who are appointed for a lifetime but can be overruled. Then Court of Appeals judges. They're not the highest level, but they're almost the final word. And then, of course, the Supreme Court.

In England the judges should have independence to protect the people against the crown. Here the judges should not be independent of the people, but be appointed for not more than seven years. The people would always re-elect the good judges.

So we need the same strategy, we need young, aggressive judges to be appointed, and that's what the President has done, but getting them through is the challenge.

The judiciary in Burma is not independent. It's widely known, everybody knows that.

If we [Federal judges] would have had to run for election in the South in the 1960's we would have had a new set of judges every year.

Federal judges, alone among public officials, are given life tenure precisely so that they will not be accountable to the people.

The Presidency is for four years, but the Supreme Court is forever.

I advocate the appointment of [Federal] Judges by the Senate.

The constitution of the judiciary, experimental and imperfect as it was even in the infancy of our existing Government, is yet more inadequate to the administration of national justice at our present maturity.

While abolishing judgeships and lower federal courts is a blunt tool and one whose use is warranted only in the most extreme of circumstances... it is one of many possibilities to check and balance the judiciary.

The appointment of judges to the higher judiciary cannot be the sole domain of a few members of the higher judiciary. This turf must be shared.

I have always thought that term limits for Justices sound good until you really give the issue some thought.

Until I was justice minister, Netanyahu was proud of stopping laws to change the judiciary.

I've long favored smart judicial-selection reform - every member of my court does - and every legislative session, reform measures are filed... and then they fail.

As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.

We must remember that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges their prejudices are not diminished and their intelligence is not increased.

The reason the Constitution gives judges life tenure is so they can be independent of political pressures and follow the law.

Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.

The judges are a big problem. Law is equal for everyone, except for them.

The judiciary has fallen to a very low state in this country. I think your part of the country has suffered especially. The federal judges of the South are a disgrace to any country, and I'll be damned if I put any man on the bench of whose character and ability there is the least doubt.

Nobody has told Trump that he can't defund sanctuary cities, because the judge William Orrick did not rule that law unconstitutional. This was a pure exercise in nothing more but a refusal to acknowledge the authority vested in Donald Trump as president. This was nothing more than yet another judge essentially saying, "You don't have the power to do anything because I don't acknowledge you as president and I don't acknowledge your oath of office because you're not sane and you're not of sound mind to actually tell the truth when you take the oath of office."