Bruce Fein Quotes

Whatever may have been the intention of the framers of a constitution, or of a law, that intention is to be sought for in the instrument itself, according to the usual and established rules of construction.

A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.

if you want the original intent of the writers of the constitution or the legislation to be the deciding factor, we should appoint 9 historians to the court.

Courts do not make the law.

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.

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

People expect that the law will be what the Supreme Court told them what the law was going to be.

In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history ... [but] the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.

Originalism is sort of subspecies of textualism. Textualism means you are governed by the text. That's the only thing that is relevant to your decision, not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute.

My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.

We know that this man has a proven record of being a 'strict constructionist.' Our President has given us his word that he will interpret the Constitution rather than make new laws from the bench.

A constitution is framed for ages to come, and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it. Its course cannot always he tranquil. It is exposed to storms and tempests, and its framers must be unwise statesmen indeed if they have not provided it, so far as its nature will permit, with the means of self preservation from the perils it may be destined to encounter.

Do judges follow the Constitution? Well, Yes and No. They follow the Constitution as they understand it.

The real difficulty is not with the Constitution but with the judges who interpret it.

The Supreme Court, when it decides a new legal question, does not make illegal what was previously legal; it gives a final authoritative determination of whether an action was legal when it took place.

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.

The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.

The greatest defect in legislative history is its illegitimacy. We are governed not by legislative intention but by laws… the text should control even if the Congress intended a different result

Original intent is a necessary fiction that jurists have invented to get a handle on the Constitution.

David Addington does not believe in the Constitution

I do not believe it is the function of the judiciary to step in and change the law because the times have changed.

A constitution is not to be made to mean one thing at one time and another some subsequent time when the circumstances may have changed…. the meaning of the Constitution is fixed when it is adopted.

The words of the Constitution ... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.