Harry A. Blackmun Quotes

A fair judicial system takes time to work.

We have long moved away from some of the principles of law as to what is fair and equitable in the United States. We all see every day that's debatable, 50-50 in almost all cases.

I am more optimistic though, that this court will eventually conclude that the effort to eliminate arbitrariness while preserving fairness in the infliction of [death] is so plainly doomed to failure that is - and the death penalty - must be abandoned altogether. I may not live to see that day, but I have faith that eventually it will arrive.

When you come in to court as a plaintiff or as a defendant, it is terribly important that you look up at the bench and feel that that person represents you and will understand you, that that person is reflective of our community and of our society.

This is the time that I really miss being in my courtroom because I believe that that's the last place in this country where there's supposed to be fairness.

The goal is justice, not executions. We all want to make sure the process is fair and that the right person is punished. These recommendations are essential to that goal.

The enforcement of the law cannot depend on the justice of a cause or one man's conscience.

The courtroom is a quiet place, Judge Roberts, where you park your political ideology, and you call the balls and you call the strikes.

I know a lot of law officers, and every single one of them faces a moment - usually after about three hours on the job - when they realise that there's no connection between law and justice. The law, as an institution, avoids justice, subverts it, just as often as it sees it done.

In the political context fair means somebody that will vote for the unions or for the business. It can't mean that in the judicial context or we're in real trouble.

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother...all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die...

The job of a justice is justice.

Because market forces and institutions are ethically indifferent, they require a deliberative, communal intelligence to prevent extreme injustice.

Laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad

He made you king to do justice and righteousness.

In the criminal justice community, as a judge, being tough is not enough. You have to be fair.

I feel morally and intellectually required to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.

Fill the seats of justice With good men, not so absolute in goodness As to forget what human frailty is.

… due process of law is not for the sole benefit of an accused. It is the best insurance for the Government itself against those blunders which leave lasting stains on a system of justice but which are bound to occur on ex parte consideration

Property has its duties as well as its rights…. To the neglect of these duties in times past is mainly to be attributed to that diseased state of society in which such crimes can take their rise…. It is not in the enactment of statutes of extraordinary severity, but chiefly in the better and more faithful performance of those duties … that a permanent remedy … is to be sought.

We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.

In Malaysia, trials have always been fair.

There may sometimes be a mistake, but I think that the citizens of America who are sworn to uphold their duty in a jury setting are going to try to do their best to do that regardless of the consequences.

I just want to believe that, as a citizen in this country, that I have equal protection under the law and that I can have a situation assessed fairly, that people can look at it, and that a court of law can determine what the outcome is.

To say that because of someone's heritage or their ethnicity that they are unable to provide fair judgement is just wrong. It's just not how the judicial system works in our country and not how it ever can work.