Legal Analysis Quotes

We binge on instant knowledge, but we are learning the hazards, and readers are warier than they used to be of nanosecond-interpretations of Supreme Court decisions.

I'm more of an engineer with a law degree than I am a lawyer with an engineering degree in terms of how I think.

The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.

What I learned from clerking for Judge Guido Calabresi and for Justice Steven Breyer was that there is no position, regardless of how wrong you think it is, that does not have some arguments in its favor, and you have to find them. And then, no matter how right your own position is, you must look for the weaknesses in that they are always there. You must be willing to find them and possibly change your approach or your mind on the subject.

I believe that President Clinton considered the legal merits of the arguments for the pardon as he understood them, and he rendered his judgment, wise or unwise, on the merits.

Anybody who pretends that how you read the 10th and 11th Amendment doesn't have a fundamental impact on the things we care about is kidding themselves. They're either uninformed or they're kidding themselves.

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.

The issue of gay marriage has reached the Supreme Court and observers are analyzing every detail to predict how each justice will vote. Experts say Chief Justice John Roberts is likely to rule in favor of gay marriage based on the fact that he spent Tuesday's hearings watching the Tony Award nominations.

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave in not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it.

Constitutions are interpreted differently from statutes.

During my years as a practicing lawyer, it just was part of your study of what Congress was trying to say in their statutes. I never really considered judges or scholars as either those who used legislative history or those who were opposed to it until after I got on the court.

While I have supported marriage equality since my days as a state senator over a decade ago, I have since conducted an extensive legal analysis that has only emboldened my support as attorney general.

Long-term I would love to go to law school.

Lincoln was not an intellectual, but no one in 200 years understood the language of the King James Bible or learned Blackstone's Laws of England, or Cicero, or the language of the Founding Fathers, better than he did.

The practice of the law is a perfectly distinct art.

The flaw in the statute is that in all its applications, it operates on a fundamentally mistaken premise that high solicitation costs are an accurate measure of fraud.

This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot. I understand the emotionality of death penalty cases.

It was an interesting experience to work alongside the solicitor general's team and then turn around and argue against them. You certainly grow as a lawyer from getting such a varied set of experiences.

I do try very hard to develop themes that are easily understood and that, hopefully, will paint vivid images of the legal principles and implications of the ruling that will stick in the Justices' heads and will help influence how they think about the case.

As a lawyer, I can assure you that a lot of document drafting is repetitive, involving cutting and pasting from templates. But the best lawyers bring a unique perspective to the process and anticipate clients' problems.

I am proud to say that the Federalist Society was founded in part at the University of Chicago, and one of its best characteristics has been an attack on liberal shibboleths by looking at real consequences and specific problems and by asking what law actually does.

The treatise found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them.

In my view, if the Court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that Amendment was very important when the nation was new, it gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms but it was for one purpose only, and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation.

What do lawyers learn in law school? They learn to win... What we've got to start thinking about is how do we solve problems.

Until now, until I actually got into law class, I just never thought of it as being an interest for me, but it's really funny because now that I'm in law, I'm like 'Wow, I could be a lawyer.