Lawyers From The United States

"I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself."

"The truth is that the judge who looks outside the historic Consitution always looks inside himself and nowhere else."

"One of the uses of history is to free us of a falsely imagined past. The less we know of how ideas actually took root and grew, the more apt we are to accept them unquestioningly, as inevitable features of the world in which we move. One reason for the stifling solidity of received opinion about antitrust, why counterargument makes so little headway, is that most of us accept our first principles and even our intermediate premises uncritically, as given, because we assume that they were established theoretically and confirmed empirically by legislatures and judges long ago. Discussion begins from there."

"Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts."

"Every lawyer of experience comes to know (more or less unconsciously) that in the great majority of cases, the precedents are none too good as bases of prediction. Somehow or other, there are plenty of precedents to go around."

"True, no man can be wholly apart from his fellows. But, if each of us is a promontory, yet the promontory reaches out beyond the social mainland to a point where others cannot intrude. Beyond that point lies an unexplorable lonesomeness, a unique privacy. It is a no-other-man's land, for others can't penetrate it, can't communicate with it."

"To the somnambulist, sleep-walking may seem more pleasant and less hazardous than wakeful walking, but the latter is the wiser mode of locomotion in the congested traffic of a modern community. It is about time to abandon judicial somnambulism."

"To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness."

"The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless."

"Only a very foolish lawyer will dare guess the outcome of a jury trial."

"(1) If a convicted man has the money to pay the docket fee and for a transcript of the proceedings at his trial, the upper federal court, by at least reading the transcript, will ascertain whether or not there was reversible error at the trial, or whether or not there was such a lack of evidence that the defendant is entitled to a new trial or a dismissal of the indictment. (2) If, however, the defendant is so destitute that he cannot pay the docket fee, and if the trial judge has signed a certificate of 'bad faith,' then although a reading of the transcript shows clear reversible errors, the federal appellate court is powerless to hear the appeal and thus to rectify the errors; and even if the defendant has money enough to pay the docket fee but not enough for a transcript, the upper court usually has no way of determining whether there were such errors, must therefore assume there were none, and must accordingly refuse to consider his appeal. As a consequence, a poor man erroneously convicted-- e.g., where there was insufficient proof of his guilt--must go to prison and stay there. In such a situation-- i.e., where the upper court, if it had the transcript before it, would surely reverse for insufficiency of the evidence or on some other ground, but cannot do so solely because the defendant cannot pay for a transcript-- the result is this: He is punished because he is guilty of the crime of being poor (more or less on the principle, openly avowed in Erewhon only, that one who suffers misfortunes deserves criminal punishment)."

"One of Judge Jerome Frank's law clerks objected to the length of one of his opinions. He spent all of a week and finally cut it down from sixty-five pages to one-half page. He left both on Judge Frank's desk without comment. The following morning Judge Frank rushed into his clerk's office and shouted, 'Bully for you,' displaying the clerk's work, 'we'll add it to the end'."

"We’d like to think that the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, but in reality, in the practical and for your daily life, the Bill of Rights means what judges tell you it means and judges in our country are a byproduct of the electoral process. Forget about 1791, the Second Amendment is on the ballot, this time, next time, every time."

"The realization of the pathetic frailty of the knowledge or beliefs on which our life depends thus leads not to despair but to open-eyed courage. But it also points to a most intimate connection between scientific method and liberal civilization. Science is not, as is popularly conceived, a new set of dogmas taught by a newer and better set of priests called scientists. It is rather a method which is based on a critical attitude to all plausible and self-evident propositions. It seeks not to reject them, but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives, each to receive the same logical treatment before we can determine which is the better grounded, is the essence of liberalism in art, morals, and politics. . . . Like science, liberalism insists on a critical examination of the content of all our beliefs, principles, or initial hypotheses and on subjecting them to a continuous process of verification so that they will be progressively better founded in experience and reason."

"Unlike the physicist, the psychologist … investigates processes that belong to the same order—perception, learning, thinking—as those by which he conducts his investigation."

"Liberalism, on the other hand, regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situations, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability."

"In regard to the terrors as well as the superstitions and immoralities of religion, it will not do to urge that they are due only to the imperfections of the men who professed the various religions. If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good."

"It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e. g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one."

"I do think in the media there is a tendency to describe conservatives as one of two things: stupid or evil. And those are the two categories that every conservative gets put in by Democrats and the media. A conservative is either stupid — too dumb to know the right answer — and even worse, if they actually know the right answer, then they’re evil. They want people to suffer. I suppose I feel mildly complimented in that they have recently invented a third category, which is crazy. It’s the alternative to stupid or evil. And now crazy is the third one, because it seems inconceivable that there could be Americans who believe in free-market principles and believe in the Constitution and are working to defend them."

"If we got out of Washington, D.C., if we went to the American people and said what are your top priorities--we actually have. We don't have to hypothesize about that. The American people over and over again say jobs and the economy are their top priorities. The American people want ObamaCare stopped because it is not working, it is killing jobs, it is pushing people into part-time work. Yet this Senate has not been listening to the American people. We need to make D.C. listen."

"Reaganomics: You start a business in your parents' garage. Obamanomics: You move into your parents' garage."

"If we're going to repeal Obamacare, and I'm convinced we're going to, it's going to come from y'all. It's going to come from the people saying this thing isn't working, let's start over. And I intend -- let me just say, that '14 and '16, I think those elections should be about many, many things, they should be about freedom, they should be about jobs, they should be about growth, but they should be about repealing every bloody word of Obamacare."

"Instead of the joblessness, instead of the millions forced into part-time work, instead of the millions who’ve lost their health insurance, lost their doctors, have faced skyrocketing health insurance premiums, imagine in 2017 a new president signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare."

"I think President Obama is the most radical president this nation's ever seen. And in particular, I think he is a true believer in government control of the economy and of our everyday lives. In my judgment, we are facing what I consider to be the epic battle of our generation, quite literally the battle over whether we remain a free market nation."

"God’s blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn’t done with America yet. I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America, and that is why today I am announcing that I’m running for president of the United States. It is a time for truth. It is a time for liberty. It is a time to reclaim the Constitution of the United States."

"Today, the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers. It used to be [that] it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier."

"In 1956, my mom married her first husband, a mathematician named Alan Wilson .. Losing Michael to crib death broke my mother’s heart, and had a profound effect on her, so much so that I never even knew that I had had a brother until I was a teenager and my mother told me the story .. And the heartbreak also ended her marriage."

"Whether it's in Ferguson or Baltimore, the response from senior officials, the president or the attorney general, is to vilify law enforcement. That's wrong. It’s fundamentally wrong. It’s endangering all of our safety and security."

"You don't know anything about Iran. You're a senator who’s calling for the overthrow of a government, and you don't know anything about the country."

"We all know by now that Ted Cruz went on vacation while Texas froze."

"We should think about Ted Cruz’s ill-fated trip to Mexico not as a, quote-unquote, “mistake,” as he now describes it, but, in a way, as a metaphor, Amy, a metaphor for how these politicians actually think about the climate crisis. They don’t think it’s a hoax. They just say that publicly. They know it is real... They believe that their wealth, their power and their privilege will protect them from the worst of its effects. And if we want to know what that looks like, it looks like Ted Cruz boarding a flight to Mexico in the middle of a disaster to go to the Ritz-Carlton in Cancún."

"Guess which US Senator from Texas flew to Cancun while the state was freezing to death and having to boil water?"

"Sen. Ted Cruz has held up President Biden’s nomination of William Burns for director of the Central Intelligence Agency until the administration acts tougher to stop a liquid natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany... “I’ll release my hold when the Biden [administration] meets its legal obligation to report and sanction the ships and companies building [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s pipeline,” Mr. Cruz said when announcing the hold."

"The guy who microwaves fish in the office."

"Here's the thing you have to understand about Ted Cruz. I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz."

"Opposing unions-public sector and otherwise-has since become utterly entrenched in the Republican Party's policies and public image, even as it continues to attempt to paint itself as representing "hardworking blue-collar men and women," as Texas senator Ted Cruz (himself a millionaire married to an heiress) phrased it in one especially disingenuous 2021 tweet."

"More than 900 Harvard Law School affiliates signed a statement denouncing Sen. Ted Cruz — a Republican from Texas who graduated from the Law School in 1995 — for contesting the results of the recent presidential election.[...] On Jan. 2, Cruz and 10 other Senate Republicans announced their intent to object to the certification of some votes in the Electoral College, calling for an “emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states.” The Law School statement condemns Cruz for the objection, stating that his “false claims of voter fraud” and his choice to contest votes are “utterly inconsistent” with his oath of office. [...] Christopher M. “Chris” Kelly — a former policy advisor to President Bill Clinton and a 1997 Law School graduate — collaborated with fellow HLS alums Marvin Ammori and Katie “Kathryn” Biber to write the statement. [...] “After Wednesday, I think that the only acceptable result of this — for Senator Cruz and for Senator Hawley, in particular — is expulsion from the Senate,” Kelly said."

"I think I would choose Trump, which may surprise some of you, but the reason is Trump has proven already that he's completely malleable. I don't think he has any fixed opinions that he would really go to the White House and fight for. Ted Cruz is not malleable. He has policies, in my opinion, that would be pursued aggressively if and when he would become president."

"If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you."

"The truth is, he's a nasty guy. He was so nice to me. I mean, I knew it. I was watching. I kept saying, 'Come on Ted. Let's go, okay.' But he's a nasty guy. Nobody likes him. Nobody in Congress likes him. Nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him. He's a very –- he's got an edge that's not good. You can't make deals with people like that and it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing for the country. Very nasty guy."

"I want to apologize to Ted for saying he should be killed on the Senate floor."

"Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

"Opposition to Nord Stream 2 flared on the eve of the Biden inauguration in January 2021, when Senate Republicans, led by Ted Cruz of Texas, repeatedly raised the political threat of cheap Russian natural gas during the confirmation hearing of Blinken as Secretary of State. By then a unified Senate had successfully passed a law that, as Cruz told Blinken, “halted the pipeline in its tracks.” ... Testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in late January Victoria Nuland told Senator Ted Cruz, "Like you, I am, and I think the Administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.""

"The stunning leak of the documents showing that the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade is corrosive to the Court. It is an outrageous consequence of the Democrats’ efforts to undermine the Court!"

"How about we all come together and say "Let’s stop murders" ? How about we all come together and say "Let’s stop rape" ? How about we all come together and say "Let’s stop attacking pedophiles" ?"

"For a decade, I have referred to people who violently assault police officers as terrorists."

"I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he is going to run for president, and he is going to create something."

"Um, a terrorist—who happened to be both Black & Muslim—murdered a police officer at the Capitol just 139 DAYS AGO. You & the rest of corrupt corporate media promptly REFUSED to cover it."

"I’d like to solve the puzzle…. #LetsGoBrandon"

"He’s articulate. He seems to be charismatic, but I don’t like his politics. I think he introduces a measure of incivility in the political process. Insulting people is not the way to go. But I guess he’s a force in the Republican political system, but I’m not a fan. [..] He’s anti-immigration. Almost every Hispanic in the country wants to see immigration reform. No, I don’t think he should be defined as a Hispanic. He’s a politician from Texas. A conservative state."