Dahlia Lithwick Quotes

Though in many other countries everything is left in the breast of the Judge to determine, yet with us he is only to declare and pronounce, not to make or new-model the law.

People expect that the law will be what the Supreme Court told them what the law was going to be.

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.

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

Judges ought to remember that their office is Ius dicere and not Ius dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.

I don't want to know what the law is, I want to know who the judge is.

It is very important to know the law, but it is more important to know the judge

Law is the prophecy of what a court will do.

All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.

There are judges who stretch the law...to suit reactionary attitudes.

I have written this treatise because there are judges who decide cases according to their own will rather than by the authority of the laws

It seems to me that stare decisis ought to be applied even to the doctrine of stare decisis, and I confess never to have heard of this new, keep-what-you-want-and-throw-away-the-rest version.

Judges should interpret the law, not make it.

The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.

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

The glorious uncertainty of the law was a thing well known and complained of, by all ignorant people, but all learned gentleman considered it as its greatest excellency.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

It is the merit of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principles afterward.

The judges’ individual sense of justice ... might result in a benevolent despotism if the judges were benevolent men. [But] It would put an end to the reign of law

It is best that laws should be so constructed as to leave as little as possible to the decision of those who judge.

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.

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules ; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a bail game to see the umpire.

Judges cannot mandate Black or Hispanic excellence.

The lawyers want to govern us by the common law of England. Trust me for it, common sense is a much safer guide for us.

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.