Felix Frankfurter Quotes

…putting on a robe doesn’t make me any smarter. […] But […] the robe does mean something – and not just that I can hide coffee stains on my shirt. Putting on a robe reminds us that it’s time to lose our egos and open our minds. It serves, too, as a reminder of the modest station we judges are meant to occupy in a democracy. In other countries, judges wear scarlet, silk, and ermine. Here, we judges buy our own plain black robes. And I can report that the standard choir outfit at the local uniform supply store is a pretty good deal. Ours is a judiciary of honest black polyester.

I'm going to try and make people realize that in order to live the life they are living, they need to have democracy, and it's being threatened.

At least there's a political input, but when you put on the robe, at that point the politics is over.

Anyone who wants to be part of the political process should adopt values that are compatible with democracy.

And one of the frustrating parts, but it's an inherent part of our democracy, is we have separation of powers.

The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.

My father thought, and now I think too, that the system of democracy is entirely based upon the system of justice. If we do not have a system of justice that people believe in, the system of democracy will fail.

We must be ever vigilant against those who would strong arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into a dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends be avoiding these beginnings.

Statutes and constitutions do not protect judicial independence -- people do.

The Congress is not a court of law but it is a court of public opinion.

We live in a democracy which can be destroyed if judges function as Platonic guardians.

In a Democracy, look how many … many powerful Orators there are with the people.

You have come here by the sovereign will of the people to cooperate with me in carrying out the mandate recently pronounced at the polls.

What concerns us most is the situation of the Judiciary as now organized … the Revolution is incomplete, as long as that strong fortress is in possession of the enemy; and it is surely a most singular circumstance that the public sentiment should have forced itself into the Legislative and Executive Department, and that the Judiciary should not only not acknowledge its influence, but should pride itself in resisting its will, under the misapplied idea of ‘independence’…. No remedy is competent to redress the evil system, but an absolute repeal of the whole Judiciary and terminating the present offices and creating a new system, defining the common law doctrine and restraining to the proper Constitutional extent the jurisdiction of the Courts

The fundamentalist call has resonance because it invited men to participate… in contrast to a political culture that reduces citizens to spectators and asked them to leave things to their rulers.

We are mourning the death of rule of law in Uganda.

Members of the Supreme Court have lifetime tenures because they're not supposed to do politics.

Ours is a fully democratic government, which in our language we call a people's government.

I'm a democrat. I will fight until the end to defend democracy and the will of the people.

We're a robust democracy here. That's the wonderful thing about this country.

I believe that an independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic.

Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating.

The only way change happens is when people become more significantly involved in the political process.

I'm a patriot, and I think democracy is the best system available. It's very flawed, but it works better than anything else.

You cannot have democracy without the institutions. You cannot have a democracy that is built on the moods of self-interested people.