Court Discretion Quotes

The Court has long held that the Constitution protects certain fundamental rights that are not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution's text, while at the same time emphasizing that courts must proceed with great caution in recognizing such rights.

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.

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

Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.

If any person shall use any language from the bar, bench, stage, pulpit, or in any other place, or hold any conversation having a tendency to promote discontent among free colored people, or insubordination among slaves, he may be imprisoned at hard labor not less than three nor more than twenty-one years; or he may suffer death, at the discretion of the Court

We seem to grant less than half a dozen folks in black robes across the street, the right to amend [the Constitution] any time they change their mind.

I sometimes think if someone appealed the Ten Commandments to some of our courts, they would rule - 'Thou shalt not, unless you feel strongly to the contrary'.

If Mike Tyson is in your courtroom and you don't send him to jail, it's an injustice. Everyone knows he's a bad guy. So if he is in your courtroom, he should go to jail.

The awful discretion, which a court of impeachments must necessarily have, to doom to honor or to infamy the most confidential and the most distinguished characters of the community, forbids the commitment of the trust to a small number of persons.

A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not, on another occasion, indulge its own will.

The Supreme Court only hears the cases that it wants to hear.