Aberto Gonzales Quotes

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

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.

All constitutional acts of power, whether in the executive or judicial department, have as much legal validity and obligation as if they proceeded from the legislature.

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

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

The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.

It makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law. It makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law.

In the legislative branch, you make the laws... and our role as judges is to interpret the law, not to inject our own policy preferences. So our task is to give an honest construction to what laws are passed by the Legislature.

In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.

The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty.

I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us.

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.

The difference between the departments undoubtedly is, that the legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.

I well understand that the role of Attorney General is to enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it.

Almost all law in the United States is State law.

The framers of the Constitution did not entrust this House with the power to impeach the President of the United States in order to establish this body as a court of personal morality.

Political reasons have not the requisite certainty to afford rules of judicial interpretation.

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.

Constitutions are interpreted differently from statutes.

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

No nation can answer for perfect exactitude of proceedings in all their inferior courts. It suffices to provide a supreme judicature where all error and partiality will be ultimately corrected

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.

Judges will have the expounding of those laws when they come before them; and they will no doubt stop the operation of such as shall appear repugnant to the constitution.

In the United States almost every political question becomes a legal question—or at least a question with legal dimensions.