Richard Cordray Quotes

Unfortunately, what many people forget is that judges are just lawyers in robes.

All judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial.

A judge who likes every opinion he reaches is a bad judge.

They might object to some of my opinions, but they don't object to my behavior as a judge.

As a practising lawyer, I was mediocre, but I worked hard as a law officer of the state government and on the private side. After becoming a judge, I maintained a low profile in other activities and concentrated only on judicial work.

You can have many different selection systems, but the bottom line has to be a system that, once the judge takes office that judge will feel that he or she is to decide the case without reference to the popular thing or the popular will of the moment.

The legal profession is overrun with money-makers, who regard it only as a business by which money is made, with little or no thought of the quality of the means used. We greatly need many more lawyers who regard the profession as a ministry in the temple of Justice.

…if I should once permit such political considerations to interfere with the administration of justice in this office, where could I stop? If I should once begin to allow my official conduct to be swayed by considerations such as those, I feel it would end by eventually leading me wholly astray.

A judge is just a lawyer who somebody's blessed.

When it is left entirely to a judge to decide whether he should give place to another he becomes a judge in his case....

[Discussing the confirmation process:] A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.

Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.

A judge's duty is to grant justice, but his practice is to delay it: even those judges who know their duty adhere to the general practice.

No man must be Judge who propounds unto himself any hope of profit, or glory, from the victory of either party.

Justice is determined by the personality of the judges.

If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.

Judges ... rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.

I would make sure that the values that I would be enforcing if I were a judge are not just my values.

Were I confirmed as a judge, I would decide cases according to the rule of law beginning to end.

We must remember that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges their prejudices are not diminished and their intelligence is not increased.

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.

Soon after I returned to private practice, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger called me one day.

Lawyers are predators in grey worsted.

There's always such a rush to judgment. It makes a fair trial hard to get.

I will for ever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English bar; without which, impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English constitution, can have no existence.