legal perspective Quotes

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.

To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.

If you're a prosecutor, and you believe the defendant is guilty, you only talk about ultimate truth, but not intermediate truth. If you're the defense attorney, you care deeply about intermediate truth, but you tend to neglect ultimate truth.

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.

Louis Kelso of San Francisco, a lawyer-economist, has for years felt that he has a radical answer to the problem.

She [Justice Sandra Day O'Connor], unlike, Judge Bork, did not think that being on the court would be an "intellectual feast," to quote Judge [Robert Heron] Bork.

The law protects nothing in that very respect, in which it is, at the same time, in the eye of the law, a crime.

My judicial philosophy is straightforward.

It was evident however that the lawyers would have to have their say....This also opened up a vista both lengthy and obscure.

Winning and losing, that's never been my objective. It's my hope that in the fullness of time, the majority of the court will come to see things as I do.

I was a lawyer for about ten years. The law teaches one to see things from all different angles.

Cow-slaughter and man-slaughter are in my opinion two sides of the same coin.

I'm a lawyer. The right to life is important.

Law professors like Obama tend to view the law as one means to an end, and others, like myself, tend to view it as the end itself.

We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans.

As a lawyer, I've dealt with really serious offences, and the public rarely hear what the true impact is on the victims' families. When you hear it from the mouths of victims, your entire approach changes, because it could happen to anybody, and they articulate that in such a powerful way.

A Supreme Court justice is sometimes a liberal on one issue and a conservative on another.

Apparently, in the eyes of the law, my admiration of Justin Bieber is creepy.

Lawyers have a way of seeing that sets them apart from the rest of us. In some way this special vision makes them invaluable, and in other ways, repulsive. Lawyers are much more focused on rational, logical, and objective criteria to the exclusion of the emotional, subjective, and sometimes irrational reponses to the world. Moreover, lawyers like to show no emotion, and possess a particular disdain for the emotions that are found in others, which has the quality of making them seem inhuman.

As a district judge, I view my role quite differently than the role of legislators.

The Supreme Court would benefit from the addition of a justice who has real experience as a practicing lawyer. The current justices have all been chosen from the lower federal courts. A nominee with relevant non-judicial experience would bring a different and useful perspective to the court.

I am a prosecutor in my bones. When I see something, I immediately go to: how is this going to affect a child?