Charles T. Canady Quotes

What's stronger-the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?

Judges should interpret the law, not make it.

The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on this subject; my duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution.

It's not so much the attorney general's job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our jobs and enforce laws effectively as we're able.

It is questionless desirable in all ordinary cases, wherever positive law is established, to restrain ourselves within the letter of that law and to allow the criminal all the benefit, if benefit to him shall result, of any evasion or escape that the law shall afford him.

A lawyer's duty is to read the law well himself, then tell the people what it is, and let them act upon it.

I think that the question is very clear-cut, not only as a matter of ethics, but also as a matter of law, that a lawyer should not be aiding and abetting in a fraudulent scheme, and part of that aiding and abetting would be to draw up subsequent documents in order to conceal the true nature of the scheme from federal investigators.

I'm duty-bound to follow the law and apply to the law to the facts as I find them.

History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.

I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.

I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us.

When the code of laws is once fixed, it should be observed in the literal sense, and nothing more is left to the judge than to determine whether an action is or is not conformable to the written law.

I'm supposed to enforce the laws of the land.

My judicial philosophy is fidelity to the law.

All I can say is that with business and the interest of any party before me, I will consider and apply the law as it is written by Congress and informed by precedent.

Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.

Remember, that his duty and his business is, not to make the law but to interpret and apply it

I well understand that the role of Attorney General is to enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.

I don’t like the death penalty but it was the law in Ohio. Therefore as a prosecutor I sought the death penalty and as a judge I imposed the death penalty. It was the law and you have to obey the law.

We have a society now where obedience to the law is really a choice, an option only.

My job is to follow the law, not to make up the law that has been promulgated by the people or the people's representatives.

The president does not have the option of choosing which laws he will follow and which he will ignore.

I cannot violate the law.

In the legislative branch, you make the laws... and our role as judges is to interpret the law, not to inject our own policy preferences. So our task is to give an honest construction to what laws are passed by the Legislature.