Justice Scalia and I served together on the D.C. Circuit. So his votes are not surprising to me. What I like about him is that he’s very funny and very smart.

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.

Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.

I’m a conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

I’ve had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O’Connor told me, ‚Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you’ll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.‘

The experience I don’t want to see repeated occurred in ‚Bush v. Gore.‘ The Court divided five to four. There were four separate dissents, and that confused the press. In fact, some of the reporters announced that the decision was seven-two. There was no time to get together.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

I’m not really conservative. I’m conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don’t any more.

On the whole, we think of our consumers – other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it’s better to have it clearer than confusing.

I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party.

All great peoples are conservative.

When you’re a pop star, it’s a little conservative; you always have to stay in a box. You have fans that are five and fans that are 65; there are so many people wanting so many things.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

The law is reason, free from passion.

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

I supported Donald Trump.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

Law is always better than war.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don’t have executions.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

I don’t think the U.S. military is conservative. It’s pragmatic.

The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it’s hardly a traditional political party anymore.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

Due process should matter.

The 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws.

Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

The label ‚liberal‘ or ‚conservative,‘ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‚Iolanthe.‘ It goes, ‚Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.‘ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

I think most defense attorneys know, to some extent, their clients are guilty.

I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there is no offense.

Law is mind without reason.

You should see what our Founding Fathers used to say to each other and in the early part of our nation. But what they were able to do, especially in Philadelphia in 1787, four months, they argued about what a House should be, what a Senate should be, the power of the president, the Congress, the Supreme Court. And they had to deal with slavery.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Justice is expensive in America. There are no Free Passes… You might want to remember this, the next time you get careless and blow off a few Parking Tickets. They will come back to haunt you the next time you see a Cop car in your rear-view mirror.

It’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.

You don’t send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like ‚shooting an unarmed child,‘ when that ‚child‘ was beating him bloody.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

I understood that with the swipe of my pen as a prosecutor, I would have the decision in my pen to make a decision about someone’s life.

None of my peers avoided prison. None of ‚em.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

More law, less justice.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.

Nobody is above the law. Imagine if there allegations against Modi and he is the Prime Minister. Should the case not be pursued just because he has become the PM. It should not be so that it should be stopped. I am not above the law.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

I’m conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.