Michael K. Simpson Quotes

You want to know what judicial activism is? Judicial activism is judges imposing their policy preferences on the words of the Constitution.

The fact that the judiciary makes foolish rulings doesn’t mean the government should intervene.

Nationwide injunctions undermine the democratic process, depart from history and tradition, violate constitutional principles, and impede sound judicial administration, all at the cost of public confidence in our institutions and particularly in our courts as apolitical decision-makers dispassionately applying objective law.

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.

The (Supreme) Court has shown in the past that the Constitution can also be twisted to frustrate the needs of democracy

We must keep in mind the vast power entrusted to Federal judges. They never stand for election. Once appointed, they serve for life. The havoc that a Federal District Court Judge can wreak is substantial.

The Supreme Court only hears the cases that it wants to hear.

If judges were just secret legislators, declaring not what the law is but what they would like it to be, the very idea of a government by the people and for the people would be at risk. And those who came to court would live in fear, never sure exactly what governs them except the judge’s will. As Alexander Hamilton explained, "liberty can have nothing to fear from” judges who apply the law, but liberty "ha[s] every thing to fear" if judges try to legislate too.

You just never know what the Supreme Court is going to do.

As Alexander Hamilton said in 'The Federalist Papers,' law is about the exercise of judgment and not will. Judicial activism is best understood as substituting judicial opinion for the command of law. The law is not an infinitely malleable tool.

There's no such thing as judicial supremacy.

If judicial review means anything, it is that judicial restraint does not allow everything.

We have a problem with judicial activism in this country.

We may have lured judges into roaming at large in the constitutional field.

The president typically never does comment on anything involving the Supreme Court cases, Supreme Court ruling, or Supreme Court finding, typically.

Judges need to restrict themselves to the proper resolution of the case before them. They need to avoid the temptation to set broad policy.

It is always possible for the court to overreach its proper bounds and perhaps declare a lot of laws unconstitutional and frustrate the will of the majority in a way that it ought not be frustrated.

For those whose exclusive norm of constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed, 'Brown' must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision.

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.

Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.

I am still doing my due diligence. A vote on a Supreme Court nominee is a lifetime appointment and when the court decides, it is the law of the land.

A justice is not like a law professor, who might say, 'This is my theory... and this is what I'm going to be faithful to and consistent with,' and in twenty years will look back and say, 'I had a consistent theory of the First Amendment as applied to a particular area.'

Judge Roberts has assured me personally that he has a healthy respect for precedent and the hard-won rights of Americans.

What five members of the Supreme Court say the law is may be something vastly different from what Congress intended the law to be.

Of course, conservatives always claim to be against judicial activism.