These supreme court justice quotes will inspire you. The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest-ranking judicial body in the United States. Its membership, as set by the Judiciary Act of 1869, consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom constitute a quorum.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging supreme court justice quotes, supreme court justice sayings, and supreme court justice proverbs.
Best Supreme Court Justice Quotes
- “We’ve got another nominee coming up, well qualified, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owens has a tremendous reputation, tremendous record, but they are already marshalling their forces to try to stop that nomination.” ~ Jay Sekulow
- “If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.” ~ Antonin Scalia
- “We give Supreme Court justices this freedom because we expect them to remain above the pull of politics, to avoid the effects of public excitement and allow a broader view, not tied to the whims of the majority at a certain moment in history.” ~ Herb Kohl
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“The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.” ~ Anthony Kennedy
- “If elected president I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice. And the nominee will say, we are going to overturn this disastrous decision on Citizens United because that decision is undermining American democracy. I do not believe that billionaires should be allowed to buy politicians.” ~ Bernie Sanders
- “You know, it shows how old I am. I can remember the good old days when the president picked the Supreme Court justices instead of the other way around.” ~ Jay Leno
- “I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they.” ~ Sonia Sotomayor
- “Given her lack of experience, does anyone doubt that Ms. Miers’s only qualification to be a Supreme Court justice is her close connection to the president? Would the president have ever picked her if she had not been his lawyer, his close confidante, and his adviser?” ~ Randy Barnett
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“I used to buy into a former Supreme Court justice’s argument that you can’t scream fire in a crowded theater. Well, I think you can.” ~ Larry Flynt
- “This [2016] election is about the people being crushed by Obamacare. And it’s about defeating ISIS and appointing a Supreme Court and a Supreme Court Justice – it could be four or five – who will defend and protect our Constitution.” ~ Donald Trump
- “Today, no less than five Supreme Court justices are on record, either through their opinions or speeches (or both), that they will consult foreign law and foreign-court rulings for guidance in certain circumstances. Of course, policymakers are free to consult whatever they want, but not justices. They’re limited to the Constitution and the law.” ~ Mark Levin
- “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.” ~ Thurgood Marshall
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“Finally, a good prosecutor knows that her job is to enforce the law without fear or favor. Likewise, a Supreme Court Justice must interpret the laws without fear or favor.” ~ Amy Klobuchar
- “Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property.” ~ Tim LaHaye
- “Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” ~ Robert H. Jackson
- “The appointment of the next Supreme Court justice must be made in the people’s interest and in the nation’s interest, not in the interest of any partisan faction.” ~ Patrick Leahy
- “I wonder if there’s just a sense that we have nothing to learn from any Supreme Court justice, including the great Chief Justice John Marshall.” ~ Dahlia Lithwick
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“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell asleep during Obama’s speech. She woke up with the other justices drawing a gavel on her face.” ~ Conan O’Brien
- “There are so many really good role models out there, we just have to make sure that we don’t glorify just one type. We have the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who is ready to be a force in kids’ lives. I could name hundreds of people like her.” ~ Michelle Obama
- “Donald Trump’s insulting comments about women go hand in hand with his plans to defund Planned Parenthood and appoint Supreme Court justices who will end legal abortion.” ~ Hillary Clinton
- “The American people deserve a Supreme Court justice who can demonstrate that he or she will not be beholden to the president, but only to the law.” ~ Patrick Leahy
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“Doesn’t anyone wonder why the NAACP does not have events celebrating the first black woman secretary of state?.. Why does an organization whose mission is to advance the lot of blacks not celebrate Clarence Thomas, our black Supreme Court justice?” ~ Star Parker
- “My mother used to say: ‘It’s not enough to be Hungarian. You still need a little talent, too.’ To paraphrase her, its not enough to be conservative, you still need to have the brainpower to be a Supreme Court justice. And, if Harriet Miers is confirmed, she likely won’t be in the same league with her colleagues in terms of gray matter.” ~ Dick Morris
- “I was very pleased to get a Supreme Court justice suggesting a column, so I went and did a column about Beano. I went with my wife and another guy to a Mexican restaurant, which we thought would be the ultimate test for an antiflatulance product. There’s a reason most of Mexico is located out of doors. And it worked. Several newspapers refused to run that column. But they did run advertisements for Beano.” ~ Dave Barry
- “The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas [and] the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- “Today, it’s not the same playing field as when I first became a lawyer in 1977, where the government had been restricted by our wonderful Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren’s court rulings. Now it’s all going the other way, the flow is against the defendant, against anything that could really help a client. But you still fight it, you do what you can do. It’s all there is.” ~ Lynne Stewart
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“It is profoundly troubling when you have Supreme Court justices not following their judicial oath. And taking the role of policy makers and legislators, rather than being judges.” ~ Ted Cruz
- “Justice Sandra Day O’Connor serves as a model Supreme Court justice, widely recognized as a jurist with practical values, a sense of the consequences of the legal decisions being made by the Supreme Court.” ~ Patrick Leahy
- “In fact, Native American Rights Fund has a project called the Supreme Court Project. And quite frankly, it’s focused on trying to keep cases out of the Supreme Court. This Supreme Court, Justice Roberts is actually, hard to believe, was probably worse than the Rehnquist Court. If you look at the few decisions that it’s issued.” ~ Robert A. Williams, Jr.
- “I want to appoint Supreme Court justices who understand the way the world really works, who have real-life experience, who have not just been in a big law firm and maybe clerked for a judge and then gotten on the bench, but, you know, maybe they tried some more cases, they actually understand what people are up against.” ~ Hillary Clinton
- “It’s quite a stark contrast between the candidates, in how they will change things for women. Hillary Clinton wants to appoint Supreme Court Justices who will protect Roe v Wade. [Donald] Trump wants to punish women for getting abortions and defund Planned Parenthood.” ~ Natalie Portman
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“It’s our last chance [November 8, 2016]. And that includes Supreme Court justices and Second Amendment. Remember that.” ~ Donald Trump
- “In the words of Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, we have a choice between a democracy or vast concentrations of wealth. We have vast concentrations of wealth which has bought its way into our democracy with its political leaders who exemplify the merger of that economic and political elite.” ~ Jill Stein
- “It wouldn’t matter if every single President since Washington had been a Bible-toting, evangelical Christian. They weren’t, of course, but even if they had been, it still would not change the secular foundation of our republic. Christians like to quote various Presidents or Supreme Court Justices who (quite incorrectly) have referred to our “Christian nation.” But what do those quotes prove? I could quote Richard Nixon, but would that prove that ours was intended to be a nation of crooks?” ~ Judith Hayes
- “I had a massive victory over Ted [Cruz], it turned out. Remember Indiana was gonna be the change? I was gonna win New York, I was gonna win, then Indiana? But Indiana was a landslide. You gotta get over it. You know, at some point you gotta get over it. Otherwise we’re gonna have three or four new Supreme Court justices that are going to be a disaster for the Republican Party.” ~ Donald Trump
- “The people of Ohio are not happy with what he’s doing. I can tell you that. They’re not happy with what he [John Kasich] is doing. But the Republican Party more than any other thing has to have a victory, a presidential victory, for one thing, if nothing else: Supreme Court justices.” ~ Donald Trump
- “Judicial excellence means that a Supreme Court justice must have a sense of the values from which our core of our political- economic system goes. In other words, we should not approve any nominee whose extreme judicial philosophy would undermine rights and liberties relied upon by all Americans.” ~ Herb Kohl
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“Indeed, only one Supreme Court justice in history, one Horace Lurton, nominated by President [John] Taft, had more federal appeals court experience [than Samuel Alito].” ~ Jon Kyl
- “The Supreme Court of the United States is an institution damned by God Almighty.” ~ Jimmy Swaggart
- “[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table…. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” ~ Antonin Scalia
- “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
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“If [a United States Supreme Court Justice is] in the doghouse with the Chief [Justice], he gets the crud. He gets the tax cases.” ~ Harry A. Blackmun
- “Young women need to know that abortion rights and abortion access are not presents bestowed or retracted by powerful men (or women) – Presidents, Supreme Court justices, legislators, lobbyists – but freedoms won, as freedom always is, by people struggling on their own behalf.” ~ Katha Pollitt
- “The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- “When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe… that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas– that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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“The solicitor general is sometimes referred to as the 10th Supreme Court justice – a pretty important position.” ~ Arlen Specter
- “Strangely enough, politics may just be the one realm in which having kids imposes no penalty on women. Kids are practically a necessity. For scientists, or Supreme Court justices, or chief executives, or the woman who wants to learn to fly F-l8s off an aircraft carrier, it works differently.” ~ Stacy Schiff
- “Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.” ~ Thurgood Marshall
- “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- “We made history when President Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor, a proud Latina, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. And as the President likes to say, ‘Every single one of them wasn’t just the best Latino for the job, but the best person for the job.'” ~ Charlie Gonzalez
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“If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.” ~ Alan Dershowitz
- “Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
- “I do think that being the second [female Supreme Court Justice] is wonderful, because it is a sign that being a woman in a place of importance is no longer extraordinary.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- “The makers of our Constitution . . . conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
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“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- “We became a congresswoman, a stay-at-home mom, a filmmaker, and a journalist. And Lino and I taught our children that they could rise to even greater heights. They could become surgeons, CEOs, supreme court justices, secretary of state, and even president of the United States. We didn’t teach our daughters that they were second-class citizens.” ~ Diana DeGette
- “Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia should be commended for acknowledging that his views are so strong that – should the Pledge case reach the Supreme Court – he wouldn’t be able to maintain the requisite impartiality.” ~ Michael Newdow
- “Jefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other.” ~ Edwin Gaustad
- “Harriet Miers isn’t qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing , let alone to be a real one.” ~ Ann Coulter
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“There is no more moving a professional relationship than that between a law clerk and a Supreme Court justice. As a place to work, the court is unique in its intimacy and intensity.” ~ Cliff Sloan
- “Since Vice President Al Gore is constantly making things up, it should come as no surprise that he wants Supreme Court justices who will do the same. As Gore put it, he will appoint judges who view the Constitution as a ‘document that grows’.” ~ Ann Coulter
- “Any successful nominee should possess both the temperament to interpret the law and the wisdom to do so fairly. The next Supreme Court Justice should have a record of protecting individual rights and a strong willingness to put aside any political agenda.” ~ Bennie Thompson
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“Our lawyers had their chat with the Supreme Court Justice, and promised to repast the chat to other members of the Supreme Court to find out whether they wanted to hear us out.” ~ Dashiell Hammett
- “My take is that there’s two ways to approach history. You sit in your armchair and you watch it on the news and you return to your PlayStation. Or you get out in the streets and you make it. Like, when those Supreme Court justices, you know, legalize desegregation, it wasn’t due to their infinite wisdom. It’s because people whose names you do not read about in history books, people whose faces you will never see, were the ones who struggled and sacrificed, sometimes gave their lives, to make this country a more equal one. When, it’s like those people don’t make history, it’s us.” ~ Tom Morello
- “I never pursued anything but acting. But as a kid, I was really interested in the Supreme Court. I wanted to to be a Supreme Court justice, but didn’t want to be a lawyer. I just wanted to go straight to being a justice.” ~ Gillian Jacobs
