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74 quotes
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Medium·Legal opinion✕clear
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 · Dissenting opinion · Legal writing

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
Plessy v. Ferguson · 1896
★ 6.0
Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

To 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
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka · 1954
★ 5.3
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