Patrick Leahy Quotes

When you have incidences like the Trayvon Martin verdict, the erosion of certain fundamental rights like voting, it just reminds us that we're always one Supreme Court justice vote away from losing the progress that has been made.

I was the Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade, but Jane Roe has been laid to rest.

The Supreme Court has always been the last bastion of the protection of our freedoms.

Unbelievers in this country have rights but they don’t have the right to veto everybody else.

American political theory has traditionally had much to say about rights and little about obligation. This tendency is wholesome; emphasis on rights is the most progressive characteristic of American legal traditions, the aspect of American law and social practice that is most admired abroad and best understood at home. People unversed in legal complexity do understand that they are entitled to the right of free speech, to a right against self-incrimination, to the right of religious freedom, to the right to a jury trial, to the right to vote. The Tenth Amendment is crucial: rights not granted to the state are reserved to the people. It is not a bad thing to live in a system in which we have so many rights that we do not list them all.

I think that Roe v. Wade will ultimately be overturned. I think it'll fall of its own weight. It does not have any constitutional underpinnings.

Churchmen are quick to defend religious freedom; lawyers were never so universally aroused as by President Roosevelt's Court bill; newspapers are most alert to civil liberties when there is a hint of press censorship in the air. And educators become perturbed at every effort to curb academic freedom. But too seldom do all of these become militant when ostensibly the rights of only one group are threatened. They do not always react to the truism that when the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes.

While even pornography is protected as free speech, the courts have consciously undermined religious speech and freedom of religion for years.

In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.

The state has a right to do that [outlaw contraceptives], I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statutes they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the Supreme Court, they are creating right, and they should be left up to the people to decide.

There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.

As Harry Blackmun said when he wrote Roe v. Wade, 'Once a child is born, the child has basic constitutional rights: due process, equal protection of the laws.'

The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.

Air Force officials appear to be more concerned with appeasing the powerful Religious Right lobbyists who have argued against any guidelines that seek to respect and protect the rights of all cadets -- not just those adhering to majority religious beliefs.

The rights [to religious freedom] are of the natural rights of mankind, and ... if any act shall be ... passed to repeal [an act granting those rights] or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

Judge Samuel Alito, millions of Americans are concerned about your nomination. They're worried that you would be a judicial activist who would restrict our rights and freedoms.

We may continue to expect the enjoyment of all the blessings of civil and religious liberty, guaranteed by the Constitution. The citizens of Illinois have done themselves honor, in throwing the mantle of the Constitution over a persecuted and afflicted people.

I think it's a bill that puts a high priority on religious freedom and recognizes that as a part of the balance.

Judicial excellence means that a Supreme Court justice must have a sense of the values from which our core of our political- economic system goes. In other words, we should not approve any nominee whose extreme judicial philosophy would undermine rights and liberties relied upon by all Americans.

I don't want my marriage or my guns registered in Washington. And if people have an opinion, it's a religious opinion that is heartly felt, obviously they should be allowed to practice that and no government should interfere with them.

This is nothing new. We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Right Act - constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation.

The proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.

In a free Government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases, will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of People comprehended under the same Government.

We see our liberties curtailed more and more and more.We see a tremendous attack on religious freedom.