Byron White Quotes (11 Quotes)

The 1st Amendment protects the right to speak, not the right to spend.

At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc. ... I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. ... As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.

The law is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the due process clause, the courts will be very busy indeed.

We're the only branch of government that explains itself in writing every time it makes a decision.

Rape is highly reprehensible, both in a moral sense and in its almost total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy of the female victim and for the latter's privilege of choosing those with whom intimate relations are to be established.

Sports and other forms of vigorous physical activity provide educational experience which cannot be duplicated in the classroom. They are an uncompromising laboratory in which we must htink and act quickly and efficiently under pressure and then force us

Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from the failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.

Maintaining order in the classrooms has never been easy and it is evident that the school setting requires some easing of the restrictions to which searches by public authorities are ordinarily subject.

To exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way affected by the prospect of the death penalty would be to deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which he or she is entitled under the law.

The risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence.