Eliot Spitzer Quotes

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

In the United States almost every political question becomes a legal question—or at least a question with legal dimensions.

Don’t bother interpreting the statute for us: we know it better than you do, for we made it.

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.

What I don't like is judges legislating from the bench. And as president of the United States, I will appoint justices who uphold the Constitution and who don't see themselves as a super legislature.

Constitutions are interpreted differently from statutes.

In the government of this Commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

Legislation and adjudication must follow, and conform to, the progress of society.

It has been the judiciary that has preserved the Constitution rather than the other two separated powers.

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

Historically, there is a presumption that the legitimate police powers of the states are not to be pre-empted by federal law unless Congress has made that purpose clear.

I respect, too, the fact that in our legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws. It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people's representatives.

Judges should always behave judicially by adjudicating, never politically by legislating. I leave policy to policymakers. They're preeminent, but they're not omnipotent. In other words, lawmakers decide if laws pass, but judges decide if laws pass muster.

A Supreme Court justice must convince at least four colleagues to bind the federal government nationwide, whereas a district court judge issuing a nationwide injunction needn't convince anyone.

A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.

In our system of government, the Supreme Court ultimately decides on the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress or of presidential actions. When their actions are challenged, both Congress and the president are entitled to have their positions forcefully advocated in court.

Judicial review has developed since the 1970s as a way for individuals to challenge decisions taken by the State.

I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.

It is always possible for the court to overreach its proper bounds and perhaps declare a lot of laws unconstitutional and frustrate the will of the majority in a way that it ought not be frustrated.

I also believe that the Supreme Court should be the final arbiter of all federal questions.

Any law can be changed, obviously, at any time.

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

We do not sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.

When a judge assumes the power to decide which distinctions made in a statute are legitimate and which are not, he assumes the power to disapprove of any and all legislation, because all legislation makes distinctions.

Of the judicial department of the Government, the Supreme Court is the head and representative, and to it must come for final decision all the great legal questions which may arise under the Constitution, the laws, or the treaties of the United States.