Judicial Precedent Quotes

In this Court dissents have gradually become majority opinions.

If confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, I would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully. That would be binding precedent of the court. It's been decided by the Supreme Court.

Over the course of 19 years on the Supreme Court, I learned some lessons about the Constitution of the United States.

I had a very long discussion with Justice Gorsuch in my office, and he pointed out to me that he is a co-author of a whole book on precedent. So, someone who devotes that much time to writing a book on precedent, I think, understands how important a principle that is in our judicial system.

The fact that the judiciary makes foolish rulings doesn’t mean the government should intervene.

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

One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, today is doctrine.

The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special movements into the jaws of that which feeds them.

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.

In general, liberals fear conservative judges far too much. In almost all areas, in fact, they dramatically overstate the stakes.

There is not, in the whole compass of human affairs, so noble a spectacle as that which is displayed in the progress of jurisprudence; where we may contemplate the cautious and unwearied exertion of a succession of wise men, through a long course of ages, withdrawing every case, as it arises, from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible rules.

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

When I went to law school, which after all was back in the dark ages, we never looked beyond our borders for precedents. As a state court judge, it never would have occurred to me to do so, and when I got to the Supreme Court, it was very much the same. We just didn't do it.

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

Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right. ... But in cases involving the Federal Constitution, where correction through legislative action is practically impossible, this Court has often overruled its earlier decisions. ... This is strikingly true of cases under the due process clause.

The (Supreme) Court has shown in the past that the Constitution can also be twisted to frustrate the needs of democracy

It's important not to get into the business of characterizing judges based on one decision they make

Each justice enters the Supreme Court possessing a record of opinion by which he or she is measured, and that without threat of election or outside influence, they will apply the Constitution as they always have; thus, it's ridiculous to assert the opposite.

'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

There's no question that Roberts will vote like William Rehnquist... If he swings, it will be from right to far right.

The Supreme Court does not get very reckless very often.

Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each successive wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.

Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.

The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

That the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses ... be a rule to all the courts in this jurisdiction