John Marshall Harlan Quotes

It is a fundamental principle of American law that the regulation of the local police of all the domestic affairs of a State belong to the State itself, and not to the Federal Government.

Our whole history tells us that the national government has been far less corrupt and incompetent than state and local government … Time and time again the federal government has had to rescue people from the states and local governments. If we left it to the states, we would still have slavery.

As a former attorney general. I have the greatest respect for the criminal justice system. But it is not good at intelligence gathering.

Texans can run Texas without the federal government telling them what to do.

Law enforcement does not ask an advantage in its struggle with the lawless. It asks only that the scales of justice be balanced. The cause of justice is not served when hardened criminals are allowed to go free through legal technicalities.

There is no good reason why police, or gaols, or the administration of justice, should be differently managed in one part of the kingdom and in another.

It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.

We have far more plea bargains in our system than we do trials.

… state authority should not be needlessly usurped by a centralized government. But I also believe that an obligation rests with the national government to see that the citizens of every state are treated equally.

Many states have legalized medicinal marijuana. I believe the president and the Department of Justice ought to respect the will of these separate states... We are capable of self-government. We don't need some federal gendarme to come and tell us what to do. I believe comity toward the states...ought to govern the policy.

Our best protection against bigger government in Washington is better government in the states.

A judge sometimes must release a criminal. He doesn't like it, she doesn't like it, but the law requires it. And the context of an election in which you are "soft on crime" betrays a misunderstanding of the judicial process and a misunderstanding of the Constitution.

The role of the federal prosecutor and the purpose of a criminal investigation are well-defined.

Our constitutionally-based criminal justice system places a high value on protecting the innocent. Among its central tenets is the idea that it is better to let a guilty person go free than to convict someone without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, or lamenting vindictive excesses in sentencing. Hollywood, supposedly a frothing cauldron of liberalism, has always been conservative on crime.

All issues of crime are better addressed at the state level.

I was a prosecutor and an FBI agent for many, many years.

The vast majority of A.D.A.s put everything on the line to make sure justice is served. That's what I love about prosecutors and the New York police.

Outside of a few national security issues like treason that the Constitution lays out, we don't need federal crimes, and we don't need federal prisons. We need state crimes and state prisons.

For six years the senators are rendered totally and absolutely independent of their States, of whom they ought to be the representatives, without any bond or tie between them: During that time they may join in measures ruinous and destructive to their States, even such as should totally annihilate their State governments, and their States cannot recall them, nor exercise any controul over them.

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

The bill is incapable of being executed …. It proceeds entirely upon the idea that the State governments will lend their aid to carry it into effect.

All lawyers are the natural enemies of the police.

Localities may be allowed to mismanage their own interests, but not to prejudice those of others, nor violate those principles of justice between one person and another of which it is the duty of the State to maintain the rigid observance.

The experience of being a prosecutor gives us a sort of proctologists view of our society.