Law Interpretation Quotes

Juries are not qualified to judge questions of law, but they are very capable of judging questions of fact.

Judges should interpret the laws according to what they say, not according to what the judges wish they would say. Judges are supposed to interpret the laws; they are not supposed to make them.

The juries [are] our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it.

It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision.....you have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy.

With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them - with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the 'reasoned judgment' of a bare majority of this Court - we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.

Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.

A Supreme Court nomination and appointment is not a roving commission to rewrite our laws.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

The job of the Attorney General is very specific. My roll, as the legal adviser, is to defend the constitutionality of the laws as they're passed.

I don't want to know what the law is, I want to know who the judge is.

Judges should follow the law in deciding cases - not their own values, good or bad.

When you are talking about constitutional law, you are talking about the balance of power in the community and the question of how you find meaning boils down concretely here to who finds the meaning.

People are always going to disagree politically, because we all come at the law from a different perspective with different needs.

Though in many other countries everything is left in the breast of the Judge to determine, yet with us he is only to declare and pronounce, not to make or new-model the law.

The government doesn't want us to know what they're doing, how they're interpreting the law, how they're interpreting and redefining their powers, and increasingly, how they're redefining the boundaries of our rights and our liberties, broadly, socially, and categorically without our involvement.

The Courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgement; the consequences would be the substitution of their pleasure for that of the legislative body.

When conservative judges strike down laws, it's because of what's in the Constitution. When liberal judges strike down laws (or impose new laws), it's because of what's in the New York Times

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

The Bush administration is not arguing that the President is above the law; they are arguing that the President is the law.

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

I believe Judge Kavanaugh will be a justice whose adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law will be a credit to the Court and all Americans.

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

I will stand up for judges who faithfully follow the law as it is written.

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.

When the laws lack clarity to the point where police officers who apply them have diverging opinions on their interpretation, can we reasonably expect that ordinary citizens can figure them out?