Warren E. Burger Quotes
-
It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house.
-
Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood.
-
Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.
-
There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.
-
We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.
-
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
-
Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values.
-
Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.
-
We may have lured judges into roaming at large in the constitutional field.
-
A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.
-
It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to 'discover' a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.
-
Judges rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.
-
However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises.
-
The trial of a case is a three-legged stool - a judge and two advocates.
-
To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
-
There can be no assumption that today's majority is 'right' and the Amish and others like them are 'wrong.' A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.
-
The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily lives of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week.
-
No one has ever suggested that tax exemption has converted libraries, art galleries, or hospitals into arms of the state or employees 'on the public payroll.' There is no genuine nexus between tax exemption and establishment of religion.
-
In my conception of it, the primary role of the Court is to decide cases. From the decision of cases, of course, some changes develop, but to try to create or substantially change civil or criminal procedure, for example, by judicial decision is the worst possible way to do it. The Supreme Court is simply not equipped to do that job properly.
-
If I were writing the Bill of Rights now there wouldn’t be any such thing as the Second Amendment . . . . This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.
-
History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.