Judicial History Quotes

When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.

Indeed, only one Supreme Court justice in history, one Horace Lurton, nominated by President [John] Taft, had more federal appeals court experience [than Samuel Alito].

The first commercial judge in Medina was a woman!

I think people know very little, really, about the court, how it works and its history. And both of those things are important in our country, but they're not things that most citizens know much about.

The historical resonances are sharp. [Louis] Brandeis is nominated on Jan. 28, 1916. Confirmed on June 1. Waits 125 days between nomination and confirmation, which remains an unbroken record, although Merrick Garland will surpass it in July, if my math is right. Anti-Semitism was definitely not the central reason for the opposition, which tended to focus more on his anti-corporate radicalism, but it was a theme.

If you look at my rap sheet, it's very long.

That is something I'm specifically equipped to discuss - how reputation can affect even your capacity to rent a place. Having good credit is irrelevant in the face of something like getting thrown out of court six years ago. I've really thought this out.

Justice Harry A. Blackmun, a quirky but pivotal member of the Supreme Court for 24 years, was a hoarder. He seems to have kept everything from his boyhood diaries to college correspondence to every scrap of paper that came his way on the Supreme Court.

I just have that sense this is the reason we got Sandra Day O'Connor on the Court in the first place is because Ronald Reagan was running for President.

I had the longest judicial vacancy in the history of the United States - on the Eastern District of North Carolina. Not many people know that.

We made history when President Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor, a proud Latina, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. And as the President likes to say, 'Every single one of them wasn't just the best Latino for the job, but the best person for the job.'

… the greatest dissents … become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

The Court's objection to cameras may be much more a product of history and process than an unwillingness to be placed in the public spotlight.

That's the problem with precedents. Even the extreme ones tend to get repeated.