John Barrasso Quotes

What five members of the Supreme Court say the law is may be something vastly different from what Congress intended the law to be.

It's hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.

I never want to be in the business of predicting what the U.S. Supreme Court will do.

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.

The Supreme Court only hears the cases that it wants to hear.

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

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

The president typically never does comment on anything involving the Supreme Court cases, Supreme Court ruling, or Supreme Court finding, typically.

I also believe that the Supreme Court should be the final arbiter of all federal questions.

Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.

The value of a decision as a precedent is very much enhanced by the care with which it has been considered, and if the opinion itself shows that other decisions of the same court, or of other courts upon the same point, have been reviewed and examined, it adds to the value of the decision made on each consideration.

While I have the greatest respect for the Supreme Court's members, I cannot claim familiarity with any particular judicial philosophies the justices might possess.

The Supreme Court is our ultimate check and balance.

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

The real difficulty is not with the Constitution but with the judges who interpret it.

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.

I don’t see why a Supreme Court justice has to have previous experience as a judge.

People expect that the law will be what the Supreme Court told them what the law was going to be.

The Supreme Court is very capable of acting quickly when it needs to.

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.

In our system of government, the Supreme Court ultimately decides on the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress or of presidential actions. When their actions are challenged, both Congress and the president are entitled to have their positions forcefully advocated in court.

In a number of cases dissenting opinions have in time become the law.

The position the Government finds itself in is not one of constructing a law, but of carrying out a decision given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

The reason to split a court is for administrative purposes, and in the past there has been much debate about the liberal decisions of the Ninth Circuit and so forth; and people have wanted to get out of the Ninth Circuit for that reason.