Harold H. Greene Quotes

And we made decisions on each of those matters which were ultimately upheld by the courts.

A dissent in a court of last resort is an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day when a later decision may possibly correct the error …

Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority.

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

I certainly would not vote against a particular judge already in office because of a decision in a case. You may not agree with a judge's decision, but the judge must act within the law.

The judiciary is entitled to finally resolve a dispute. Not every decision is right.

Whether interpreting the Constitution or filling in the blanks of a law or a regulation, every word of the court's opinion can widen or narrow our rights as Americans and either protect us or leave us more vulnerable to any winds that blow.

Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It's how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.

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.

Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath.

What five members of the Supreme Court say the law is may be something vastly different from what Congress intended the law to be.

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

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty.

To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.

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.

My feeling is that the judge has a responsibility to the Constitution first, precedent second. Precedent is one factor. It is not the only factor. If it was the only factor, then, you know, we wouldn't have had Roe vs. Wade. We wouldn't have had Griswold. We wouldn't have had Lawrence. We wouldn't have had all these cases which the Left love.

You want to know what judicial activism is? Judicial activism is judges imposing their policy preferences on the words of the Constitution.

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution.

The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges’ views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases.

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

If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states, then the juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty.

Courts cannot refuse to hear a case on the merits merely because they would prefer not to.

Measured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication. Doctrinal limbs, too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable.