Samuel Freeman Miller Quotes

You’ve got to expect that there will be twists and turns [in court opinions], especially with major doctrine.

The Supreme Court overrules, distinguishes, and upholds prior precedents. Sometimes it ignores them. But it does not - cannot - 'defy' them.

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

When the Supreme Court renders an important decision, the reasons it gives are often more important than the choice it has made.

I always look for judges who respect precedent.

Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath.

And we made decisions on each of those matters which were ultimately upheld by the courts.

It is a very great mistake, common to counsel, and especially to young counsel, to consider that a decision of any court must necessarily command the respect of another.

One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, today is doctrine.

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.

My job is to write opinions, decide cases and write opinions, not to respond to idiocies.

It seems to me that stare decisis ought to be applied even to the doctrine of stare decisis, and I confess never to have heard of this new, keep-what-you-want-and-throw-away-the-rest version.

Disctrict judges are the first to encounter novel issues, and they must resolve them without the aid of guiding precedent. Because they work alone, district judges do not have the benefit of collegial decision making or the comfort of shared consensus.

I certainly would not vote against a particular judge already in office because of a decision in a case. You may not agree with a judge's decision, but the judge must act within the law.

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

Unlike tennis matches, Supreme Court decisions are tiebreaker-free, meaning the lower-court ruling stands without any high-court guidance.

I think justices of all stripes agree that stare decisis is important, but not an inextricable command. It's not inflexible; it's not absolute.

The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

One precedent creates another and they soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was a fact, today is doctrine.

My feeling is that the judge has a responsibility to the Constitution first, precedent second. Precedent is one factor. It is not the only factor. If it was the only factor, then, you know, we wouldn't have had Roe vs. Wade. We wouldn't have had Griswold. We wouldn't have had Lawrence. We wouldn't have had all these cases which the Left love.

Though in many other countries everything is left in the breast of the Judge to determine, yet with us he is only to declare and pronounce, not to make or new-model the law.

Judges ought to remember that their office is Ius dicere and not Ius dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.

Law is the prophecy of what a court will do.

Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.