Legal Competence Quotes

In 1987, I had my first opportunity to provide 'advice and consent' on a Supreme Court nominee. At that time, I stated that the qualifications essential for evaluating a nominee for the bench included 'integrity, character, legal competence and ability, experience, and philosophy and judicial temperament.' On that test, Elena Kagan fails.

The mental capacity of a person to make reasonable contracts, is the only criterion, by which to determine his legal capacity to make obligatory contracts. And his mental capacity to make reasonable contracts is certainly not to be determined by the fact that he is, or is not, twenty-one years of age.

If you spend five minutes with me or watch me try to balance my checkbook, you can only imagine the disaster I would make of anyone's legal issues.

I'm used to litigating against incredibly competent, high-quality lawyers that are very good chess players.

There are three sorts of lawyers - able, unable and lamentable.

INADMISSIBLE- Not competent to be considered. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible ... but there is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.

… the comfortable fiction that all lawyers are skilled or even competent craftsmen in representing the fundamental rights of their clients.

'Competent counsel' ought to require more than a human being with a law license and a pulse.

It has been thought that the people are not competent electors of judges learned in the law. But I do not know this to be true, and, if doubtful, we should follow principle.

There may be said to be three sorts of lawyers, able, unable, and lamentable.