Diane S. Sykes Quotes

My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.

Constitutions are interpreted differently from statutes.

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.

Originalism is sort of subspecies of textualism. Textualism means you are governed by the text. That's the only thing that is relevant to your decision, not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute.

Law is not a science, but is essentially empirical.

All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.

Bad facts make bad law.

Remember when John Roberts was seeking confirmation of the Supreme Court, and he said judges should be just like umpires, just calling balls and strikes? Well, turnabout is fair play. What baseball needs behind the plate are umpires like those judges who are called strict constructionists, which means you follow subtle law to the letter.

Courts do not make the law.

Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more, while judges like Ms. Sotomayor are activists. But there is no magic right way to interpret terms like 'free speech' or 'due process' - or potato chip.

The practice of law requires both continuity and growth - a deep understanding of legal principles born of reason, tradition, and experience and tested by time, but also a mind alert to present needs and the future consequences of public and private legal decisions.

Judges should decide legal disputes. Judges should not make law.

I like the law. I like the part that's about reasoning, about persuasion, about telling stories, about trying to build structures that fall within rules.

A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.

How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law.

It is the merit of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principles afterward.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases.

Remember, that his duty and his business is, not to make the law but to interpret and apply it

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

Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

The Supreme Court, when it decides a new legal question, does not make illegal what was previously legal; it gives a final authoritative determination of whether an action was legal when it took place.

It is very important to know the law, but it is more important to know the judge

The rules of legal interpretation are rules of common sense, adopted by the courts in the construction of the laws.

Whatever may have been the intention of the framers of a constitution, or of a law, that intention is to be sought for in the instrument itself, according to the usual and established rules of construction.

The law has to be, in part, a teacher.