John Roberts Quotes

Let's ask ourselves: Does America really need 70 percent of the world's lawyers? Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million new lawsuits coursing through the system annually? Is it right that people with disputes come up against staggering expense and delay?.

Courts are for people to get help, not just to shrink dockets.

Lawyers (are) operators of the toll bridge across which anyone in search of justice has to pass.

300 million Americans every day decide to settle their disputes in courts of law rather than settle them in the streets with sticks and stones.

And let no one apply to the king in any suit, unless he at home may not be worthy of law, or cannot obtain law.

When I used to teach civil procedure as a law professor, I would begin the year by telling my students that 'civil procedure is the etiquette of ritualized battle.' The phrase, which did not originate with me, captured the point that peaceful, developed societies resolve disputes by law rather than by force.

The judicial system is the most expensive machine ever invented for finding out what happened and what to do about it.

Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.

I don't think the trial practice is dead. But it is very ill. There are some days you could throw a hand grenade down the hall of the Harris County Courthouse and not hit anybody.

Americans have grown a great deal more realistic about lawyers and the law. I think that's all for the good. A lot of people will say to you these days, 'If you are looking for justice, don't go to a courtroom.' That's just a more realistic perspective on what happens in the legal process.

You sit up there, and you see the whole gamut of human nature. Even if the case being argued involves only a little fellow and $50, it involves justice. That's what is important.

Ordinary lawsuits shall not follow the royal court around, but shall be held in a fixed place.

Why Lawsuits are Good for America

Whate'er is best administered is best," may truly be said of a juridical system, and the due distribution of justice depends more upon the rules by which suits are to be conducted, than on the perfection of the code by which rights are defined.

I have come to regard the courts not as a cathedral but rather as a casino.

They Should Have Their Day In Court

The laws you have already passed for the establishment of a judiciary system have opened the doors of justice to all descriptions of persons. You will consider in your wisdom whether improvements in that system may yet be made, and particularly whether a uniform process of execution on sentences issuing from the Federal courts be not desirable through all the States.

Every subject of the Commonwealth ought to find a certain remedy, by having recourse to the laws, for all injuries or wrongs which he may receive in his person, property, or character. He ought to obtain right and justice freely, and without being obliged to purchase it; completely, and without any denial; promptly, and without delay;

For the common man the justice meted out in the lower courts is much more important than that meted out in the Supreme Court.

Nothing is so unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose ...

Conflicts that in Sweden and Japan would be solved by quiet consultations … through the bureaucracy are fought out through formal litigation in the American court system.

Courts, not mobs, must execute the penalties of the law.

[The Utopians] have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.

A judge's duty is to grant justice, but his practice is to delay it: even those judges who know their duty adhere to the general practice.

There are very few countries in the world where we have a jury system as we all know.