Quotes · Skopia

11 quotes

The thirteenth amendment secured them freedom; the fourteenth amendment due process of law, protection of property, and the pursuit of happiness; and the fifteenth amendment attempted to secure the negro against any deprivation of the privilege to vote because he was a negro. The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments have been generally enforced and have secured the objects for which they are intended. While the fifteenth amendment has not been generally observed in the past, it ought to be observed.

William Howard Taft

Inaugural Address of William Howard Taft · 1909

★ 1.0

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

William J. Brennan, Jr.

New York Times Company v. Sullivan · 1964

★ 1.0

Essay · Political literature

Bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 84 · 1788

★ 1.2

Speech · Political speech

Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

Thomas Jefferson

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 2.1

Lecture

It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant, and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes."

Hugo Black

1960

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Dissenting opinion · Legal writing

They 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 Brandeis

Olmstead v. United States · 1928

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

I know it when I see it.

Potter Stewart

Jacobellis v. Ohio · 1964

★ 3.6

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance… Various guarantees create zones of privacy.

William O. Douglas

Grisworld v. Connecticut · 1965

★ 4.3

Legal writing

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

1865

★ 5.3

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

Robert H. Jackson

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette · 1943

★ 6.8

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

Hugo Black

Everson v. Board of Education · 1947

★ 6.8

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