Because nothing has transpired in the last half-century to suggest that the national interest in public disclosure of lobbying information is any less vital than it was when the Supreme Court first considered the issue, we reject that challenge.
The constitution sets all three branches out as co-equal. The obligation of the judicial branch — as far back as the decision in Marbury v. Madison — is to review the constitutionality and legality of actions by the other branches. And that is its only job, to decide cases and controversies in front of it under article three.
But when I asked myself, as I often do: 'What would Judge Friendly have done?
As my parents taught me by both words and deeds, a life of public service is as much a gift to the person who serves as it is to those he is serving. And for me, there could be no higher public service than serving as a member of the United States Supreme Court.
Well, of course I have great personal affection for the justice for whom I clerked, Justice Brennan.
If the CIA is the emperor, you're asking us to say the emperor has clothes when the emperor's bosses say that the emperor doesn't. I mean, how can you ask the court to say that at this point?
People must be confident that a judge’s decisions are determined by the law, and only the law.
For myself the balance came from always driving my children to school. So that every day we had that first half-hour, 45 minutes of nothing but uninterrupted time. Sometimes it was just a bunch of sarcasm. Sometimes it was just listening to the radio. But sometimes it was real explanation of what the kids were thinking what they were worried about.
They tell you in Washington, that if you want a friend get a dog. Harry Truman said that. That is not true. Get a family. This is a hard place to be. No matter how much honor you have, people will attack you one way or the other. And the principle solace that you get is from your family. Because they’re behind you no matter what happens. So never forget about that. Whatever interests you have in your career, you have to balance it with a deep relationship with your family.
The hard things are when you have to make your friends disappointed because you think you’re required, for example, by the law to do something that maybe is different than what you would do as a matter of public policy.
The most important thing that a clerk can do for a judge, I tell my clerks, is to prevent me from jumping off the cliff if I don’t want to. That is, sometimes I don’t realize there’s a cliff there at all, that the implications of what I’m doing are really totally wrong, and that sometimes it takes another person or two other people to warn me that you’re just not reading this case correctly, or you’re just not understanding the implications of what a decision in this way would be.
Trust that justice will be done in our courts without prejudice or partisanship is what, in a large part, distinguishes this country from others.
I think there is no greater job anybody can have than having been a prosecutor.
Everybody, I think, who hopes to become a judge would aspire to be able to write as well as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. None are going to be able to attain that. But I’ll try at least — if confirmed to be as brief and pithy as he is.
The role of the court is to apply law to the facts of the case before it … not to legislate, not to arrogate to itself the executive power, not to hand down advisory opinion on the issues of the day.
This is the greatest honor of my life, other than Lynn agreeing to marry me 28 years ago. It's also the greatest gift I have ever received except, and there's another caveat, the birth of our daughters.
For a judge to be worthy of such trust, he or she must be faithful to the Constitution and to the statutes passed by the Congress. He or she must put aside his personal views or preferences, and follow the law — not make it.
The CIA asked the courts to stretch that doctrine too far—to give their imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible.
The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don’t take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case, you make your best judgement, you only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty. You may well be wrong, but you have done your best to ensure that as far as the evidence that you are able to attain, the person is guilty. It is the kind of even-handed balancing that a judge should undertake although of course a judge has the advantage of having somebody speak for the other side.