David Souter Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best David Souter Quotes. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the David Souter Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.

1

Ellis Island lies in New York Harbor 1,300 feet from Je

Ellis Island lies in New York Harbor 1,300 feet from Jersey City, New Jersey, and one mile from the tip of Manhattan. At the time of the first European settlement, it was mostly mud, sand, and oyster shells, which nearly disappeared at high tide.

David Souter

2

Meaning comes from the capacity to see what is not in some simple, objective sense there on the printed page.

David Souter

3

Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government had the power to issue commands to the several sovereign states, but it had no authority to govern individuals directly.

David Souter

4

The court has to decide which of our approved desires has the better claim, right here, right now, and a court has to do more than read fairly when it makes this kind of choice.

David Souter

5

Over the course of 19 years on the Supreme Court, I learned some lessons about the Constitution of the United States.

David Souter

6

The obligation of any judge is to decide the case before the court, and the nature of the issue presented will largely determine the appropriate scope of the principle on which its decision should rest.

David Souter

7

In a perfect world, I would never give another speech, address, talk, lecture or whatever as long as I live.

David Souter

8

Legislatures not driven to desperation by the problems of public education may be able to see the threat in vouchers negotiable in sectarian schools.

David Souter

9

The Brady Act was passed in response to what Congress described as an ‘epidemic of gun violence.’

David Souter

10

There is a danger to judicial independence when people have no understanding of how the judiciary fits into the constitutional scheme.

David Souter

11

The language of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws did not change between 1896 and 1954, and it would be very hard to say that the obvious facts on which ‘Plessy’ was based had changed.

David Souter

12

The Court’s majority holds that the Establishment Clause is no bar to Ohio‘s payment of tuition at private religious elementary and middle schools under a scheme that systematically provides tax money to support the schools’ religious missions.

David Souter

13

There can be no stronger claim to a physician‘s assistance than at the time when death is imminent, a moral judgment implied by the state’s own recognition of the legitimacy of medical procedures necessarily hastening the moment of impending death.

David Souter

14

We hold that an employer is vicariously liable for actionable discrimination caused by a supervisor, but subject to an affirmative defense looking to the reasonableness of the employer’s conduct as well as that of a plaintiff victim.

David Souter

15

The Constitution is no simple contract, not because it uses a certain amount of open-ended language, but because its language grants and guarantees many good things, and good things that compete with each other and can never all be realized, altogether, all at once.

David Souter

16

For those whose exclusive norm of constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed, ‘Brown‘ must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision.

David Souter

17

I am not a pessimist, but I am not an optimist about the future of American democracy.

David Souter

18

I retired when the Supreme Court rose for the summer recess in 2009, and a couple of weeks later I drove north from Washington with no regrets about the prior 19 years or about the decision to try living a more normal life for whatever time might remain.

David Souter

19

If speech always wins, even if it’s an atomic secret that’s going to be broadcast to our enemies, it’s easy to make a decision. Speech always wins. But it doesn’t… Liberty doesn’t always trump equality or equality always trump liberty.

David Souter