Great Throughts Treasury

"When you are young and impecunious, society conditions you to exchange time for money, and this is quite as it should be. Very few people are hurt by having to work for a living. But as you become more affluent, it somehow is very, very difficult to reverse the process and begin trading money for time."

"A father's interest in having a child--perhaps his only child--may be unmatched by any other interest in his life. It is truly surprising that the state must assign a greater value to a mother's decision to cut off a potential human life by abortion than to a father's decision to let it mature into a live child."

"A public library does not acquire Internet terminals in order to create a public forum for Web publishers to express themselves, any more than it collects books in order to provide a public forum for the authors of books to speak."

"A judge who is a 'strict constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs?the latter two groups having been the principal beneficiaries of the Supreme Court's 'broad constructionist' reading of the Constitution."

"Actually, the Swedish genealogists were so good that I found out more than I wanted to about my Swedish ancestors: one of them in the 17th century was executed for having embezzled funds from an estate for which he was the steward."

"An oft-heard description of the Supreme Court is that it is the ultimate protector in our society of the liberties of the individual. This phrase describes an important role of the Supreme Court, but by ignoring other equally important functions of the Court, it has a potential for mischief. It is a fairly short leap from this language to a feeling that the US Constitution is somehow "vindicated" every time a claim of individual right against government is upheld, and is not vindicated whenever such a claim is not upheld. But this, of course, cannot be the case. The role of the Supreme Court is to uphold those claims of individual liberty that it finds are well-founded in the Constitution, and to reject other claims against the government that it concludes are not well-founded. Its role is no more to exclusively uphold the claims of the individual than it is to exclusively uphold the claims of the government: It must hold the constitutional balance true between these claims."

"All principles of antitrust law are court made, so we need to be as clear as possible."

"As for the name Rehnquist, I am quite uncertain as to its origin. Under the Swedish patronymic system of naming, my grandfather and his brothers would have been named Anderson, since Anders was the name of their father. "Quist" in Swedish means branch, I am told. For example, "Lindquist" means lime branch or linden branch, and Palmquist means palm branch. The best I can come up with is that the "rehn" in my name refers to a small village near the farm on which my grandfather grew up."

"But the greatest injury of the 'wall' notion is its mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. . . . The wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."

"And the public visiting the capitol grounds is more likely to have considered the religious aspect of the tablets' message as part of what is a broader moral and historical message."

"As the demographic makeup of this pool changes, it seems entirely likely that the under-representation of minorities to which you refer in your letter will also change."

"Commutation decisions have not traditionally been the business of the courts, ... As such, they are rarely, if ever, appropriate subjects for judicial review."

"Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the `right' to an abortion is not so universally accepted as (Roe) would have us believe."

"I leave you now a wiser, but not a sadder, man."

"I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be re-affirmed."

"I used to worry about every little footnote... Now I realize you just need five votes."

"I want to put to rest the speculation and unfounded rumors of my imminent retirement... I am not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as chief justice as long as my health permits."

"I wrote this book for a sense of personal satisfaction. Just like taking a good photograph or painting a picture or playing a good golf game or something, it's the thing in itself that justifies it."

"I think Alexander Hamilton has received a little bit of short shrift from history, and I think Jefferson has been treated a little bit too generously. I admire them both, but I admire them both about equally."

"If we assume a liberty interest but nevertheless say that, even assuming a liberty interest, a state can prohibit it entirely, that would be rather a conundrum."

"If you could say of any one individual that the court as an institution is the length and shadow of that individual, surely it would be John Marshall."

"Inadequate compensation seriously compromises the judicial independence fostered by life tenure. That low salaries might force judges to return to the private sector rather than stay on the bench risks affecting judicial performance. . . . Every time an experienced judge leaves the bench, the nation suffers temporary loss in judicial productivity. Diminishing judicial salaries affects not only those who have become judges but also the pool of those willing to be considered for a position on the federal bench."

"It has been said that Sweden's loss has been America's gain, and I think this is true. Swedish immigrants and their descendents have contributed a great deal to America and it is worthwhile to remember our Swedish heritage."

"It is truly surprising that the state must assign a greater value to a mother's decision to cut off a potential human life by abortion than to a father's decision to let it mature into a live child."

"It is always possible for the court to overreach its proper bounds and perhaps declare a lot of laws unconstitutional and frustrate the will of the majority in a way that it ought not be frustrated."

"Jury selection is best based upon seat-of-the-pants instincts, which are undoubtedly crudely stereotypical and may in many cases be hopelessly mistaken."

"Miranda announced a constitutional rule that Congress may not supersede legislatively."

"It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional history. . . . The establishment clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly forty years. . . . There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation [between church and state]. . . . The recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or the intent of the framers."

"The considered professional judgment of the Air Force is that the traditional outfitting of personnel in standardized uniforms encourages the subordination of personal preferences and identities in favor of the overall group mission."

"The Constitution does not guarantee the right to acquire information at a public library without any risk of embarrassment."

"The Constitution requires that Congress treat similarly situated persons similarly, not that it engage in gestures of superficial equality."

"The court has built a great deal of prestige, and I think is generally quite well thought of as a public institution in the country. It is always possible for the court to overreach its proper bounds and perhaps declare a lot of laws unconstitutional and frustrate the will of the majority in a way that it ought not be frustrated. In that sense, it poses a danger, but not the same sort of perhaps very active danger that a run-away Congress or runaway executive would."

"Pregnancy is of course confined to women, but it is in other ways significantly different from the typical covered disease or disability."

"No amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make the errors true. The "wall of separation between church and State" is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."

"Our judges will not continue to represent the diverse face of America if only the well-to-do or the mediocre are willing to become judges."

"Somewhere "out there," beyond the walls of the courthouse, run currents and tides of public opinion which lap at the courtroom door."

"The American judicial system is admired throughout the world."

"The Supreme Court is an institution far more dominated by centrifugal forces, pushing toward individuality and independence, than it is by centripetal forces pulling for hierarchical ordering and institutional unity."

"The framers of our Constitution came up with two major contributions to the art of government. The first was the idea of an executive not dependent on the political support of the legislature. The second was the idea of the judiciary independent of the executive and legislative branches."

"The Equal Rights Amendment would "turn holy wedlock into holy deadlock.""

"This result? will daily stand as a veritable sword of Damocles over every succeeding president and his advisers."

"Perhaps you should say there should be mandatory retirement even of members of the court, members of the federal judiciary. I'm sure there can be questions about whether one does as good work when you get into your - you know, I'm 67."

"The joint opinion, following its newly minted variation on stare decisis, retains the outer shell of Roe v. Wade, but beats a wholesale retreat from the substance of that case. We believe that Roe was wrongly decided, and that it can and should be overruled consistently with our traditional approach to stare decisis in constitutional cases. We would adopt the approach of the plurality in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), and uphold the challenged provisions of the Pennsylvania statute in their entirety."

"The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."

"To reach its result, the court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the 14th Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the amendment,"

"Those of you in your twenties have the feeling that time is something of which you have an endless supply. Again, take it from someone who has been on this planet a good deal longer than most of you have, that is not the case."

"To the extent that libraries wish to offer unfiltered access, they are free to do so without federal assistance."

"We decline to overrule Miranda ourselves."

"We start with first principles. The Constitution created a federal government [whose] powers are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite,"

"We strike down the floating buffer zones around people entering and leaving the clinics because they burden more speech than is necessary to serve the relevant government interests,"