Judicial Accountability Quotes

Republicans say to Democrats, “Your judges are political activists.” The Democrats respond to the Republicans, “Your judges are political activists.” So the public thinks that all judges are political activists and just politicians in robes. This is very worrying.

The fact that the judiciary makes foolish rulings doesn’t mean the government should intervene.

The judges must be many, for, if few, they will always follow the behests of the few.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Independence sounds good in theory, but in practice, it is mutually exclusive with accountability. The more independence you give a prosecutor, the less you make that prosecutor accountable to the public and regular checks and balances.

Judges ... rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.

Judges certainly have political connections and strong political views, but that doesn't mean they can't rise above politics when they hear cases. We expect them to, and the law presumes they do.

It's important not to get into the business of characterizing judges based on one decision they make

As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.

This business of removing Judges by impeachment is a bungling way.

Each justice enters the Supreme Court possessing a record of opinion by which he or she is measured, and that without threat of election or outside influence, they will apply the Constitution as they always have; thus, it's ridiculous to assert the opposite.

The penalty shall be capital punishment for a judge or arbiter legally appointed who has been found guilty of receiving a bribe for giving a decision

Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.

All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.

Until I was justice minister, Netanyahu was proud of stopping laws to change the judiciary.

I do not think that we should select judges based on a particular philosophy as opposed to temperament, commitment to judicial neutrality and commitment to other more constant values as to which there is general consensus.

It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.

The duty of a judge is to administer justice, but his practice is to delay it

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

The court stands less than tall when it defers hearing a case for political reasons.

The judiciary must be strengthened and released from political interference.

I own that it is a good deal of a mystery to me how judges, of all persons in the world, should put their faith in dicta. A brief experience on the bench was enough to reveal to me all sorts of cracks and crevices and loopholes in my own opinions when picked up a few months after delivery and reread with due contrition.

If judges were just secret legislators, declaring not what the law is but what they would like it to be, the very idea of a government by the people and for the people would be at risk. And those who came to court would live in fear, never sure exactly what governs them except the judge’s will. As Alexander Hamilton explained, "liberty can have nothing to fear from” judges who apply the law, but liberty "ha[s] every thing to fear" if judges try to legislate too.

There should be many judges, for few will always do the will of few.

The United States Supreme Court, once a reliable if ultimate recourse for progressive and even revolutionary grievances, has become a retrograde wellspring for enormous economic and social distress.