William Rehnquist Quotes (37 Quotes)


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

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

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



    an excellent administrator. No justice ever missed a deadline in the time he served.

    Garvey said. ''He's been very important in getting the court to recognize limitations on congressional power.

    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 father's interest in having a child -- perhaps his only child -- may be unmatched by any other interest in life.

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

    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,

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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 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.

    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.



    First, he found in the Texas anti-abortion law no violation of due process because the traditional test--rational relation to a valid state objective--was easily satisfied. As to the majority in Roe having cranked up the test--the law could be sustained only if the State could show a compelling state interest, ... the history of the Fourteenth Amendment.

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

    a gentle dignity and an unfailing sense of purpose and sometimes a sense of humor.

    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.

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

    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.

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


    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.

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

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

    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,

    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,

    Professor Barton H. Buzz ... He was a great jurist with sharp logic, a photographic memory, and a love of history. He leaves as his legacy not only scores of precedent-setting legal decisions but the modern conservative legal movement. He was the favorite of years of law clerks who always found him willing to take the time to offer personal advice. Those of us fortunate enough to get to know him outside the courtroom will miss him for his humor, friendship, warmth, and tennis game.

    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 that process and begin trading money for time.

    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.



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