Robert Bork Quotes

The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.

Marriage has been defined by every legislature that has ever sat in the United States from every State, now 50 States, the same way, but now we have unelected judges altering and changing that fundamental institution.

FDR's justices were allies while he was alive, but after he died, they developed four totally different theories of what the Constitution is, two of which are considered conservative and two of which are considered liberal.

What I don't like is judges legislating from the bench. And as president of the United States, I will appoint justices who uphold the Constitution and who don't see themselves as a super legislature.

The nation will be shaped for decades by decisions that are made by President Bush and the Senate about the future of the Supreme Court.

Judges who take the law into their own hands, who make up constitutional 'rights' in order to strike down laws they oppose, undermine the people's right to have their values shape public policy and define the culture.

Judges are the people who have to protect the rights of individuals, have to protect the rights of minorities, have to protect the rights in the Constitution, have to protect the requirement that the executive and the legislature not simply exercise raw power but adhere to standards of reasonableness and constitutionality.

I do not think that we should select judges based on a particular philosophy as opposed to temperament, commitment to judicial neutrality and commitment to other more constant values as to which there is general consensus.

When we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution ... we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. It was enough for them to realize or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and cost their successors much sweat and blood to prove that they created a nation. The case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience and not merely in what was said a hundred years ago.

The Founding Fathers provided a way to reverse unpopular Supreme Court decisions: a constitutional amendment.

Judicial Watch is pleased that Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement from the Supreme Court will provide President Trump another opportunity to nominate a constitutional conservative who will honor the Constitution and the rule of law, rather than legislate from the bench.

For those of us on the front lines fighting Washington's power grabs, Judge Gorsuch's commitment to interpreting the Constitution and the laws as they are actually written is welcome news.

The state has a right to do that [outlaw contraceptives], I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statutes they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the Supreme Court, they are creating right, and they should be left up to the people to decide.

If Americans loved judicial activism, liberals wouldn't be lying about what it is. Judicial activism means making up constitutional rights in order to strike down laws the justices don't like based on their personal preferences. It's not judicial activism to strike down laws because they violate the Constitution.

When conservative judges strike down laws, it's because of what's in the Constitution. When liberal judges strike down laws (or impose new laws), it's because of what's in the New York Times

Illinois Senator Paul Simon, once said "The test for a Supreme Court nominee is not where he stands on any one specific issue. The test is this: Will you use your power on the court to restrict freedom or expand it?"

I would appoint judges that interpreted the Constitution rather than invented it, understood the difference between being a judge and being a legislator.

Judge Samuel Alito, millions of Americans are concerned about your nomination. They're worried that you would be a judicial activist who would restrict our rights and freedoms.

This is the difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals want justices to vote a certain way. We, conservatives, want a particular legal philosophy, a philosophy for how to interpret the Constitution.

Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right.

In my judgment the people of no nation can lose their liberty so long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights as its point of departure in interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights.

I came to believe that actually [Louis] Brandeis tended to uphold laws that he liked and strike down those that he didn't, generally strike down centralizing federal agencies in the New Deal, and uphold state economic experimentation.

I believe you [Samuel Alito] and others would look and say that the role of the courts is limited and it's not to decide political matters.

Conservative political opinion in America cleaves to the tradition of the judge as passive interpreter, believing that his absolute loyalty to authoritative law is the price of his immunity from political pressure and of the security of his tenure.

Judges are required by our democratic system not to overstep their positions to become policy makers or super-legislators.