Legal Objectivity Quotes

Litigants obey the verdict of a tribunal solely on the premise that there is an objective rule of conduct, which they both accept.

It’s not what I as a judge believe is right. It is what I believe the normal man of reasonable ability and integrity believes is right.

One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution... But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.

Judges certainly have political connections and strong political views, but that doesn't mean they can't rise above politics when they hear cases. We expect them to, and the law presumes they do.

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

'Fairness' can be an important quality for legislators to consider when they are passing public policies. But it is a subjective standard. And it has no place among judges on a court - whose duty is to dispassionately judge a law's constitutionality.

We have judges in the American system and they take on a black robe where they are supposed to shield their partisan preferences. They are not red or blue state judges. They are judges.

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

Supreme Court nominees should know without any doubt that their job is not to impose their own personal opinions of what is right and wrong, but to say what the law is, rather than what they personally think the law ought to be.

For those whose exclusive norm of constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed, 'Brown' must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision.

A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge... stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands.

It is best that laws should be so constructed as to leave as little as possible to the decision of those who judge.

If a judge does his job right, you [the observer] will never know how he personally feels about the policies he may have to rule on.

The enforcement of the law cannot depend on the justice of a cause or one man's conscience.

I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge. It's the difference between being a judge and being a law professor.

I am often asked what it was like to be a woman clerking for Justice Scalia. 'Much like being a man clerking for him' is my easy answer. Justice Scalia believed in one simple principle: That law came to the court as an 'is,' not an 'ought.'

I think judges have to have the ability to put aside their personal views and rule on the facts of the case with fidelity to the law and the Constitution.

Good judges do not side with anyone. They rule impartially and blindly based upon the law.

My personal opinions on any subject are really not relevant, not important, and to the extent that I might inject them, I am acting improperly as either a District Court judge or as an appellate court judge.

The courtroom is a quiet place, Judge Roberts, where you park your political ideology, and you call the balls and you call the strikes.

It's never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge's personal convictions - whether they derive from faith or anywhere else - on the law.

A judge may never subvert the law or twist it in any way to match the judge's convictions.

Judges shall judge justly, according to the written law and not according to their own judgment.

As judges we are neither Jew nor gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic …. As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them.

We all hope that the police and prosecutors are objective. That's their job, but sometimes it's not true.