Supreme Court of the United States
27 quotes
Biography
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law.
"In my conception of it, the primary role of the Court is to decide cases. From the decision of cases, of course, some changes develop, but to try to create or substantially change civil or criminal procedure, for example, by judicial decision is the worst possible way to do it. The Supreme Court is simply not equipped to do that job properly."
"Nine, nine... There have been nine men there for a long, long time, right? So why not nine women?"
""At the Supreme Court, those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know,” Ginsburg was fond of saying."
"The court is the least abstract of institutions. It is nine men, nine very human men, participating in a process that can be impressive or disturbing, grave or funny. And contrary to the general impression, the process is more visible than most of what goes on in government."
"It is true that diminished legitimacy may be restored, but only slowly. Unlike the political branches, a Court thus weakened could not seek to regain its position with a new mandate from the voters, and even if the Court could somehow go to the polls, the loss of its principled character could not be retrieved by the casting of so many votes. Like the character of an individual, the legitimacy of the Court must be earned over time. So, indeed, must be the character of a Nation of people who aspire to live according to the rule of law. Their belief in themselves as such a people is not readily separable from their understanding of the Court invested with the authority to decide their constitutional cases and speak before all others for their constitutional ideals. If the Court's legitimacy should be undermined, then, so would the country be in its very ability to see itself through its constitutional ideals. The Court's concern with legitimacy is not for the sake of the Court but for the sake of the Nation to which it is responsible."
"For nearly 40 years, the Supreme Court has been evading the 14th Amendment's provision of "equal protection" of the law for all, in order to let government-imposed group preferences and quotas continue, under the name of "affirmative action." Equal rights under the law have been made to vanish by saying the magic word "diversity," whose sweeping benefits are simply assumed and proclaimed endlessly, rather than demonstrated."
"Roe’s fate seemed even bleaker when two of the Court’s most liberal Justices, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, left the Court due to failing health. Brennan resigned on July 20, 1990, and was replaced by David Souter, a bookish jurist from New Hampshire about whom little was known when he was nominated. President George H.W. Bush, attempting to avoid a replay of the Bork nomination, hoped that Souter would be able to avoid a politically difficult confirmation battle. Thurgood Marshall, the great civil rights lawyer who had argued Brown v. Board of Education, announced his retirement on June 27, 1991. To replace him, President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a conservative African American judge on the D.C. Circuit. Thomas was widely believed to be hostile to Roe v. Wade but stated at his confirmation hearings that he had never debated it and had no personal opinion on the subject. The Thomas nomination was bitterly contested by senators who doubted Thomas’s qualifications and his commitment to civil rights and civil liberties, including the right to abortion. Matters were thrown into an uproad when Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by a former employee at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Anita Hill. After weeks of controversy, Thomas was finally confirmed by a 52-48 vote, the narrowest margin in Supreme Court history."
"I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay, have a good day."
"Why would we cut off the national debate about this next justice? Why would we squelch the voice of the people? Why would we deny the voters a chance to weigh in on the make-up of the Supreme Court?"
"In an election year, we have a long tradition, that a lame-duck president doesn't get to jam a Supreme Court nominee through on the very end."
"I want you to use my words against me. If there is a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say, "Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination." And you could use my words against me and you'd be absolutely right."
"When an election is under way the American people are about to weigh in on who's going to be the president. And that's the person, whoever it may be, who ought to be making this appointment."
"We will move forward without delay and in deliberate fashion. We will process the president's nominee and I believe that we will confirm that nominee as well."
"I believe the right thing to do is for the Senate to take up this nomination and to confirm the nominee before election day."
"I will support President @realDonaldTrump in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg."
"The Senate has more than sufficient time to process a nomination. History and precedent make that perfectly clear."
"The exceptionally urgent need to reduce the risk of COVID-19 exposure for Medicare and Medicaid patients given the anticipated winter surge in infections tips the equities overwhelmingly in favor of a stay"
"Supreme Court eras are often identified with their chief justices, as is true of the current period that began with Roberts nearly two decades ago. But the Court can be measured also by presidential influence. Certain presidents, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed eight justices in his twelve years in office, had a disproportionate effect on the Court. Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon also stood out for their imprint. The Trump effect, especially in terms of the individuals chosen and the resulting shift in the balance of power, has been incomparable. He is gone from office and they are here for life."
"There are limits to analyzing the reasoning of published Supreme Court opinions, to say nothing of drafts. Logic and syllogisms don’t carry us very far in the law."
"None of us are safe from the extreme anti-women and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. ideology that now dominates this court."
"Decades ago, Justice Louis D. Brandeis declared that "the reason the public thinks so much of the Justices of the Supreme Court is that they are almost the only people in Washington who do their own work." Today, no knowledgeable observer of the court would make a similar claim. As late as 1940, most clerks acted primarily as secretaries. In some cases a clerk might contribute an important footnote to an opinion, but not until Justice Frank Murphy and Chief Justice Fred Vinson joined the court in the 1940s did clerks take the lead in writing opinions and sometimes determine a justice's vote. As the number of clerks increased from two to three and, finally, to four, so did their involvement in their justice's work."
"Donald Trump is an astoundingly dangerous candidate for president. He is a pathological liar …"
"We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution -- not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men."
"Throughout American history, the Supreme Court, often derided as the least democratic branch of the federal government, has, paradoxically, best maintained its legitimacy when it has functioned as the most democratic branch—that is, when it has deferred to the constitutional views of Congress, the president, and the country as a whole. For all the invective initially generated by Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed school segregation, the decision was supported by more than half of the country when it was handed down in 1954, a time when southern minorities were blocking Congress from enacting the civil-rights legislation that the public supported. Many of the most famous decisions by the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts similarly reflected the popular will: a survey of eighty-eight civil-rights and civil-liberties cases between 1953 and 1994 found that, in most instances, the Supreme Court was generally in sync with public opinion. When public opinion opposed a particular rights claim, so, by and large, did the Supreme Court."
"In the United States at the present day, the reverence which the Greeks gave to the oracles and the Middle Ages to the Pope is given to the Supreme Court. Those who have studied the working of the American Constitution know that the Supreme Court is part of the forces engaged in the protection of the plutocracy. But of the men who know this, some are on the side of the plutocracy, and therefore do nothing to weaken the traditional reverence for the Supreme court, while others are discredited in the eyes of the ordinary quiet citizens by being said to be subversive and Bolshevik."