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Constitutional law20 quotes
This right of privacy...is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. — Harry A. Blackmun · 1973The 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 · 1947These men and women...ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. — Anthony Kennedy · 2015They are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. — Roger B. Taney · 1857If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. — Thurgood Marshall · 1969In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. — William O. Douglas · 1965All 20 quotes →First Amendment14 quotes
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 · 1947An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment. — Hugo Black · 1964If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. — Thurgood Marshall · 1969In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. — William O. Douglas · 1965Whether, to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance—unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion—have the full protection of the guaranties... But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance... We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957All 14 quotes →Legal theory14 quotes
It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is... If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each... This is of the very essence of judicial duty. — John Marshall · 1803They are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. — Roger B. Taney · 1857The king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness. — William Blackstone · 1765The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose — Edward Coke · 1603To establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. — Nicholas Conyngham Tindal · 1843Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. — John Marshall Harlan · 1896All 14 quotes →Freedom of speech and expression13 quotes
An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment. — Hugo Black · 1964Whether, to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance—unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion—have the full protection of the guaranties... But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance... We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957Of that freedom one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. — Benjamin Cardozo · 1937We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with "actual malice"—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1964All 13 quotes →American politics8 quotes
The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. — John Marshall · 1803These men and women...ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. — Anthony Kennedy · 2015An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment. — Hugo Black · 1964The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. — John Roberts · 2007The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. — John Marshall · 1821We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today. — Sandra Day O'Connor · 2003All 8 quotes →Bill of Rights7 quotes
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 · 1947The 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 · 1943Neither 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. — 1865The 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 · 1965I know it when I see it. — Potter Stewart · 1964They 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 · 1928All 7 quotes →Law7 quotes
No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. — Magna Carta · 1215All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone · 1769Reason is the life of the law, nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason. — Edward Coke · 1628How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law. — Edward Coke · 1628The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1919A long line of cases shows that it is not merely of some importance, but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done. — Gordon Hewart · 1924All 7 quotes →Politics6 quotes
Campaign promises are-by long democratic tradition-the least binding form of human commitment. — Antonin Scalia · 2002We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. — Louis Brandeis · 1932Right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and will always be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all. — Learned Hand · 1943In all tyrannical governments, the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty. — William Blackstone · 1769Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. — John Paul Stevens · 2000Rule of law6 quotes
The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. — John Marshall · 1803The history of liberty has largely been the history of observance of procedural safeguards. — Felix Frankfurter · 1943We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens. — Sandra Day O'Connor · 2004No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. — Magna Carta · 1215When urgent considerations of the public safety require compromise with the normal principles constraining law enforcement, the normal principles may have to bend. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. — Richard Posner · 1999Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. — John Paul Stevens · 2000US Constitution6 quotes
We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding. — John Marshall · 1819Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. — John Marshall Harlan · 1896The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. — John Marshall · 1821Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are Constitutional. — John Marshall · 1819The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States. — Salmon Portland Chase · 1869Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between tire two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government. — Learned Hand · 1917Constitutional theory5 quotes
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 · 1943It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is... If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each... This is of the very essence of judicial duty. — John Marshall · 1803There is no doubt that, if there were a super-Supreme Court, a substantial proportion of our reversals of state courts would also be reversed. We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final. — Robert H. Jackson · 1953Certainly all those who have framed written Constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be that an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void. — John Marshall · 1803It was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that, in the long run, prosperity and salvation are in union, and not division. — Benjamin Cardozo · 1935Criminal law4 quotes
All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone · 1769Prior to any questioning, the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed. — Earl Warren · 1966The offense of riding or going armed, with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land. — William Blackstone · 1769Our procedure has been always haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream. What we need to fear is the archaic formalism and the watery sentiment that obstructs, delays, and defeats the prosecution of crime. — Learned Hand · 1923Freedom4 quotes
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. — Louis Brandeis · 1928The history of liberty has largely been the history of observance of procedural safeguards. — Felix Frankfurter · 1943Of that freedom one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. — Benjamin Cardozo · 1937Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. — Louis Brandeis · 1927Obscenity4 quotes
Whether, to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance—unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion—have the full protection of the guaranties... But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance... We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957I know it when I see it. — Potter Stewart · 1964We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1957Political theory4 quotes
Of that freedom one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. — Benjamin Cardozo · 1937It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. — Louis Brandeis · 1932Right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and will always be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all. — Learned Hand · 1943In all tyrannical governments, the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty. — William Blackstone · 1769Right to privacy4 quotes
This right of privacy...is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. — Harry A. Blackmun · 1973If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1972The 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 · 1965They 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 · 1928Democracy3 quotes
Campaign promises are-by long democratic tradition-the least binding form of human commitment. — Antonin Scalia · 2002In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives. — Felix Frankfurter · 1962Right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and will always be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all. — Learned Hand · 1943Jim Crow3 quotes
The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution... We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done. — John Marshall Harlan · 1896To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone... We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. — Earl Warren · 1954Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. — Henry Billings Brown · 1896Reason3 quotes
If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold. — Louis Brandeis · 1924Reason is the life of the law, nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason. — Edward Coke · 1628How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law. — Edward Coke · 1628Taxes3 quotes
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1927The power to tax involves the power to destroy. — John Marshall · 1819Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury. — Learned Hand · 1934Affirmative action2 quotes
We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today. — Sandra Day O'Connor · 2003In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently. — Harry A. Blackmun · 1978Citizen and state2 quotes
It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error. — Robert H. Jackson · 1950Immunities that are valid as against the federal government by force of the specific pledges of particular amendments have been found to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, and thus, through the Fourteenth Amendment, become valid as against the states. — Benjamin Cardozo · 1937Common law2 quotes
Reason is the life of the law, nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason. — Edward Coke · 1628Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the demands of society... Now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, — the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term "property" has grown to comprise every possession — intangible, as well as tangible. — Louis Brandeis · 1890Custom and convention2 quotes
Whence it is that in our law the goodness of a custom depends upon its having been used time out of mind; or, in the solemnity of our legal phrase, time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. — William Blackstone · 1765How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law. — Edward Coke · 1628Equality2 quotes
The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing—one person, one vote. — William O. Douglas · 1963In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently. — Harry A. Blackmun · 1978Fourth Amendment2 quotes
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 · 1928The government ought not to use evidence obtained and only obtainable, by a criminal act...for my part I think it a less evil that some criminals could escape than that, the Government should play an ignoble part. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1928Freedom of thought2 quotes
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. · 1929If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. — Robert H. Jackson · 1943Judicial supremacy2 quotes
It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is... If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each... This is of the very essence of judicial duty. — John Marshall · 1803There is no doubt that, if there were a super-Supreme Court, a substantial proportion of our reversals of state courts would also be reversed. We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final. — Robert H. Jackson · 1953Justice2 quotes
Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render to every one his due. — Justinian I · 533A long line of cases shows that it is not merely of some importance, but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done. — Gordon Hewart · 1924Legal history2 quotes
It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. — Felix Frankfurter · 1950Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the demands of society... Now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, — the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term "property" has grown to comprise every possession — intangible, as well as tangible. — Louis Brandeis · 1890