Search the Archive

"A community where local authorities consistently approached law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety, but as a way to generate revenue. A community where both policing and municipal…"

"The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by."

"The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards—and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and…"

"We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."

"Poor Joshua! Victim of repeated attacks by an irresponsible, bullying, cowardly, and intemperate father, and abandoned by respondents who placed him in a dangerous predicament and who knew or learned …"

"Our Constitution exists to secure individual freedom, the essential condition of human flourishing. Liberty is not provided by government; liberty preexists government. It’s our natural birthright, no…"

"After all, of what use is it to search for a creator? The difficulty is not thus solved. You leave your creator as much in need of a creator as anything your creator is supposed to have created. The b…"

"Deep-seated preferences cannot be argued about — you cannot argue a man into liking a glass of beer — and therefore, when differences are sufficiently far reaching, we try to kill the other man rather…"

"It is the responsibility of all of us to remind governments of their commitments to settle disputes by peaceful means and to negotiate in good faith under the UN Charter, and to denounce war agitation…"

"To my mind when a great Judge, a master of the whole subject, thinking it necessary for the decision of the case to carefully examine into and to state the practice, it is nothing to say as against th…"

"...for nothing can be more reasonable, than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them, which they themselves pay to all above them."

"But when notice is a person's due, process which is a mere gesture is not 'due process.'"

"Although dialogue, by itself, will not be sufficient to address these issues – because concrete action is needed – initiating a broad, frank, and inclusive conversation is a necessary and productive f…"

"A child's sexual innocence isn't moral, it's literal: he has no context for it. From the adult who uses him sexually, he learns a context"

"to a young woman who was being sued by her aunt for a loan for breast augmentation: And instead of her paying it back every month, you should pay it back every month - certainly you don't go in and ge…"

"I worry that this incredibly important and incredibly difficult conversation about race and policing has become focused entirely on the nature and character of law enforcement officers, when it should…"

"The Sovereign can only act by advisers, and through the instrumentality of those who are neither infallible nor impeccable— answerable, indeed, for all that the irresponsible Sovereign may do, but lia…"

"...all men naturally love freedom, however ignorant they may be of that eternal vigilance and the necessary measures to preserve it, and where their folly has caused them to lose it, always try to ret…"

"The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the st…"

"His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage."

"I cannot think of a single answer that I made in the years that I argued before the Court while Justice White sat on it that seemed to satisfy him. While I won a number of cases that I argued before h…"

"did not believe with the evangelist that . . . truth could be found by abiding in the Word or in becoming the disciple of any leader. Neither did he think it came from intuition or from speculation in…"

"Do not praise an undeserving man because of his riches."

"I happened to be in the company of six or seven Baptist elders—how I ever got into such bad company, I don’t know,—and one of them asked what I thought about baptism. Well, I never thought much about …"

"The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows."

"Columns written by Bruce Fein for Slate"

"Last August, when I visited Ferguson to meet with concerned citizens and community leaders, I made a solemn commitment: that the United States Department of Justice would continue to stand with the pe…"

"One very important thing that young lawyers must know is that when one argues a case and later in the evening you ponder over it and say, that’s what I should have said , that’s the only regret. It co…"

"To the somnambulist, sleep-walking may seem more pleasant and less hazardous than wakeful walking, but the latter is the wiser mode of locomotion in the congested traffic of a modern community. It is …"

"What does torture have in common with genocide, slavery and wars of aggression? They are all “jus cogens.” That’s Latin for “higher law” or “compelling law.” This means that under international law, n…"

"President Bush and thousands of others, politicians and preachers, are making speeches and lying in their teeth, all agreeing that they can't explain such tragedies, but they're just certain a loving …"

"Martin himself had of course a serious intention and must, for all his motley, be regarded as a heroic figure. Nor have I any sympathy with those who make prim mouths at him for introducing scurrility…"

"I saw the cause of Christ's government, and of the bishops' antichristian dealing, to be hidden. The most part of men could not be gotten to read anything written in the defence of the one and against…"

"Less than the weed that grows beside thy door"

"... the usual hired guns who made up the expert witness circuit and would say basically what they were paid to say."

"I don't know what's in Rush Limbaugh's heart, so I'm not going to comment on the sincerity of his apology. What I can comment on is the fact that all decent folks can agree that the remarks that were …"

"The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States."

"If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head."

"According to a 2014 report, the European Union is spending at least 315 million euros on drone-related projects."

"Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is t…"

"“Admit we are not sure of all the risks. . . ."

"The law itself is on trial in every case as well as the cause before it."

"The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments could mean only one thing — one per…"

"The husband is not liable for the criminal conduct of his wife."

"How much of our lives could we buy back if we cherished our lives instead of our trinkets?"

"Good-by, gentlemen! I am not asking to be Governor of Illinois … I have in my composition that which I have declared to the world as my views upon religion. My position I would not, under any circumst…"

"How can we address concerns about 'use of force', how can we address concerns about officer-involved shootings if we do not have a reliable grasp on the demographics and circumstances of those inciden…"

"Ironically, many of the people who are critics today were among those we called half-steppers, who had co-opted by "the man" because they were part of the system that oppressed us. When the revolution…"

"Supreme Court Associate Justice Nomination Hearings on Ruth Bader Ginsburg in July 1993"

"Regret is productive only of error. I care not what I was, or what any one was. I only look for what I am each moment. For as each moment is and at once is not, it must follow that if we think of the …"

"Thy modesty's a candle to thy merit."

"In the last 23 years, from the day I was stripped of my judgeship to the years of doing battle in the revolutionary courts of Tehran, I had repeated one refrain: an interpretation of Islam that is in …"

"Each act of aggression, each new expedition of conquest is prefaced by a pronouncement containing a moral justification and an assurance to the victims of the imperial aggression that all is being don…"

"Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support the greater…"

"The entire legal profession - lawyers, judges, law teachers - has become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers - healers of con…"

"To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness."

"If there's one thing the international community should do, if only out of deference because he won the election, is to take seriously his arguments that coca products have a place in the internationa…"

"Nothing could tempt me to do this man injustice, though I could hardly add to the injury he has done himself."

"The world needs you and it needs the things you carry. So I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly."

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race relat…"