Legal Outcomes Quotes

Justice is determined by the personality of the judges.

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.

You just never know what the Supreme Court is going to do.

If the courts are making the decisions, it matters who the judge is and, of course, people are concerned with what is the bottom line.

Unlike tennis matches, Supreme Court decisions are tiebreaker-free, meaning the lower-court ruling stands without any high-court guidance.

And we made decisions on each of those matters which were ultimately upheld by the courts.

Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.

When I was a practising lawyer in the family court, there were too many judges who, when you left their courtroom, you didn't know whether you'd won or whether you'd lost.

People are offering competing visions of what happened in the past. And the justice system is willing to accept either of those competing visions and to impose consequences as a result. When you think of it that way, it's a little bit startling, because we want to believe that there is one truth and, therefore, one justice, whereas, if you have practiced law as long as I have, you realize that there is actually a range of acceptable outcomes.