Lawyers From The United States

"I'm so sorry to hear of Jeff's passing. He laid the groundwork in so many ways for the LGBTQ advocacy taking place across Michigan still today. He will be missed by many, though his legacy will live on through those he inspired throughout his life."

"This old, outdated statute criminalizing health care providers is an embarrassment. That removing it was even a debate, much less a difficult vote for some senators, is inexplicable to me."

"We are in the worst moment of this pandemic to date. The situation has never been more dire. We are at the precipice and we need to take some action."

"Our job here over the first year here, 2021, will be to redefine the opposition."

"The worst thing you can do is lay the wet blanket of government over this emerging area that frankly a lot of people are going to with or without government. Maybe that's the warning sign. This is going to happen. People are going to continue to move in this direction because cryptocurrency and everything that comes with it is a response to too much government."

"At the end of the day I think elections are decided by the issues that impact peoples' wellbeing."

"I get elected and reelected overwhelmingly in my legislative district and the congressional district is not that different."

"Elected officials would be wise to always keep at the center of the debate the critical importance and meaning of American citizenship. Any laws passed in response to the crisis that debases the concept of citizenship will be to our peril, and laws that strengthen our sense of citizenship will be passed to our great benefit for generations of Americans to come."

"When you don't produce the documents that are supposed to be supporting this data-driven or science-driven decision, I don't know what to say other than it's been a bad decision."

"The more we hold true to our ethical principles and practices, the more value brother Knights and their families see in our business. The more value they see, the more they turn to the Knights of Columbus to help protect their family, and the stronger our financial position grows. And it goes even further. I firmly believe that our moral compass has helped guide us through a turbulent decade and an uncertain economy."

"If extreme means that I am unwilling to go to Washington, D.C., and do what President Obama tells me, then so be it. But I am certainly not going to Washington, D.C. to represent the interests of D.C. I'm going there to represent Colorado values."

"Any time you have a president that you can distinguish your positions from, it is beneficial."

"To have a sovereign nation, be able to do that. Part and parcel of that is having a common language. Part and parcel of being a unified nation is that you share the same language. That's all that means. That doesn’t mean you can’t speak your native tongue in your own house, but in terms of the government, in terms of public speech, in terms of everything that we do as a nation, English is our language."

"If we were talking about dancing, this is the time for doing a zeibekiko, by ourselves."

"When I took on this position a few years back, what I felt was the most important statement and most the important guidance I could give my members is that I have to and I will respect the regional differences that we have within the state. Having run for a state-wide office many years ago it gave me a greater appreciation of the regional differences, not only is it just regional, but it is also philosophical. I have members that are very conservative but that reflects their district."

"One of the enduring mysteries of modern political discourse is the way in which smart people — who are not remotely anti-Semitic — impose curious, unworkable double standards on the nation of Israel. Let’s take, for example, the response of many on the left to the so-called Great Return March, an effort by thousands of Gazans to storm the Israeli border. After all, the international legal standards are clear. A nation has the right to protect the integrity of its border, and that right is supplemented by an inherent right of self-defense in the face of a hostile foreign power. Hamas — which rules Gaza — rejects Israel’s right to exist and remains in a state of perpetual, declared war with Israel. Any reasonable person contemplating the consequences of a border-wall breach knows that chaos and bloodshed may result."

"If you believe that America is and should remain a nation of laws and borders — and if you understand the logistical and physical challenges of walking 1,000 miles through Mexico — there is a relatively simple, firm way to respond to migrant caravans. To the migrants, the message is simple. The United States will secure its border and enforce its immigration laws. In accordance with those laws, it will summarily deport illegal entrants and interpret its asylum statutes in accordance with their meaning and purpose. If you do complete the journey, you will not be released into the American interior but instead held at the border. Rather than risk a fruitless journey, it is better to turn back now."

"Teens do not exist on an island. The connection between parental emotional health and the emotional health of their kids is well established. Moreover, the way parents raise their kids can, of course, directly affect emotional health."

"The counterrevolution to the American Revolution is in full force. And it can no longer be dismissed or ignored, for it is devouring our society and culture, swirling around our everyday lives, and ubiquitous in our politics, schools, media, and entertainment. Once a mostly unrelatable, fringe, and subterranean movement, it is here- it is everywhere."

"Taylor Swift, imbecile Taylor Swift just endorsed for president the most antisemitic, pro-Islamist, pro-criminal, anti-cop, anti-middle class & working people, open borders, anti-women’s sports, anti-military, inflation-causing, job-destroying, pathological liar and extremist Marxist politician ever to run for president."

"In June 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court's majority opinion in Lawrence overruled Bowers. Kennedy wrote the opinion for the majority, which was long on philosophy and short on precedent. Kennedy's opinion in Lawrence is a result in search of a rationale. He began with "Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places." This statement means absolutely nothing from a constitutional perspective. Every criminal or immoral act can be justified on the grounds of exercising liberty. But Kennedy has a purpose in such an approach. By using the catchall word "liberty" rather than applying the Constitution to the issue, he seeks to expand the plain meaning of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which prohibits states from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law") to grant rights not mentioned elsewhere in the Constitution."

"Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. It's the only one. It's based on thousands of years of human experience. There is nothing narrow about the conservative philosophy. It's a liberating philosophy. It is a magnificent philosophy. It is a philosophy for the ages, for all times."

"Kennedy and the majority explicitly overruled Bowers and wrote that Stevens's original reasoning, in dissent, that morality alone is not a legitimate basis to support a law was right. Scalia countered, "This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, [no law against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity] can survive rational-basis review. Kennedy, traveling further and further away from his judicial responsibility to interpret the Constitution, wrote of an "emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection" to sexual decisions and reviewed how sodomy laws had been repealed in most states and even in Europe, where the European Court of Human Rights found sodomy laws invalid under the European Convention on Human Rights. Kennedy concluded with a lecture about liberty: "The petitioners are entitled to respect their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government... The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual." (Emphasis added.)"

"When my mom took my friends and me to see dad's movies, they would be scared, but to me, it was just my dad on the screen. When I moved back to Los Angeles, I was in the middle of the ninth grade. So I was pretty much a Los Angeles resident from the time I was fourteen, fifteen years old. While I was in high school, I didn't want so much attention; I'd rather keep a low profile."

"I've gone by Bela G. Lugosi or Bela Lugosi Jr. most of my life and am proud of it, of course. Hardly a day has gone by that someone hasn't recognized the name. But people are very nice, although some even still think I'm actually my father."

"For me, the legacy is priceless. Bela Lugosi is an icon and he represents the beginnings of the horror genre and classic Hollywood. His portrayal of Dracula – his make-up and costume, his mannerisms, his voice – have become the benchmark for all other portrayals and caricatures. I believe my father's face and name will always be synonymous with Dracula and horror films, making him a part of film history worldwide. It is my wish that the stewards of the legacy will continue to be the descendants of Bela Lugosi."

"Few desire to know the truth of what is happening in our state’s abortion clinics. All of the outrage, all of the noise is directed at one thing: silencing the uncomfortable truth. It’s either willful ignorance or a decision to partner with the abortion industry. When I started in public office, I was intellectually pro-life, but now I have come to see that the life issue is truly the issue of our time. The depth of evil that exists to protect this lie prevents the states from protecting children. How we determine the answer to this issue is what will determine where our nation will end up. Unless the truth prevails, abortion will destroy us as a nation."

"A nation of free people unwilling to defend the freedoms of those with whom they disagree will not long remain a free nation."

"Our nation's founding documents are kept in a vault in Washington, D.C. because they are so fragile that exposure to oxygen and movement would cause them to crumble in your hand. Those documents cannot stop a bullet or a sword and are only powerful if the truth found in the words of those documents resonate in the heart of a people."

"Procedural due process to an unjust law is merely organized injustice."

"Despoiled of rights and presumptions granted even common criminals, the Issei and Nisei suffered in silence, hoping that acquiescence would prove their loyalty and improve their lot. They did not know the government."

"The damage done to these innocent people without cause was utterly evil ... What is then to be said of our own Generals and civilian officials who not only condoned governmental crimes against our native-born citizens but systematically aided and abetted them? Hundreds of the ill, the halt and aged infirm paid with their lives in the three years of physical moves forced upon them. But this was conveniently forgotten. Atrocities were committed in those camps but sentries and security officers went unpunished. (1973)"

"That the unconstitutionality of so many of the illegalities perpetrated were never conceded by the High Bench is scandalous—leaving us only a moment of passion removed from the destruction, once again, of our liberties. Given another manufactured hysteria over "national security" or some such expediency to justify ends, citizens can again be carted off at the point of bayonets. That is America's evacuation legacy. (1973)"

"The JACL [Japanese American Citizens League] pretended to be the spokesman for all Japanese Americans, but they wouldn't stand up for their people ... They led their people like a bunch of goddam doves to the concentration camps."

"What’s disgraceful is that the maximum jail sentence that Donziger would face if he’s found guilty of contempt is six months—less than half the time he will have already spent locked up... It is this kind of questionable conduct from the federal bench that prompted Frisch to file an emergency motion on May 11 at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit accusing Preska and Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who has pursued Donziger since 2011, with “abuses of power and discretion.” Donziger’s supporters argue that Chevron’s own lawyers are collaborating in the effort to persecute him."

"Steven Donziger has been under house arrest for over 580 days, awaiting trial on a misdemeanor charge. It’s all, he says, because he beat a multinational energy corporation in court."

"The Chevron corporation’s legal onslaught against the environmental lawyer Steven Donziger continues. The oil giant and two federal judges in New York are apparently in a de facto alliance to persecute Donziger, who in 2013 helped win a landmark $9.5 billion legal victory against the company for polluting vast stretches of rain forest in Ecuador... Federal Judge Loretta Preska, who has already kept Donziger under huse arrest in New York City for the past 10 months, on May 18 refused his request to relax his confinement before his trial for contempt, which will not start until September 9. Donziger’s attorney had asked Preska to allow him out of his Upper West Side apartment for three hours a day. Preska said no. She repeated her preposterous claim that Donziger could be a flight risk, saying, “I could be to the airport and on an airplane in three hours.” Donziger lives with his wife and 13-year-old son. He has already surrendered his passport."

"This goes way beyond me. It goes to really what kind of society we want in America. How does one man get so targeted by an oil company such that he's being prosecuted by one of their law firms? What does that mean for other advocates? What does that mean for environmental justice advocates and corporate accountability advocates and lawyers? What does that mean for our planet? Because if you can't do this kind of legal work to hold these polluters accountable, the destruction of the earth will happen at a faster pace."

"bI have never seen anything like this attempt to destroy Steven Donziger. Chevron and its law firms have taken control of the awesome power of government to prosecute an environmental activist and deprive him of his liberty. They have done so with the active complicity of two federal judges. It’s something I’ve never before seen in my career."

"It's frustrating because they should first help the people on the border who are citizens the United States and who are suffering, who are at greater risk of having harm done to their property or harm done to them or to their families. It seems like if you cared about the American people, you would address that problem first, before you spend billions of dollars on Central American countries."

"We have a legislative branch that creates the law and the executive carries it out. When it works in that fashion, America works."

"I was not prosecuted by the U.S. government. I was prosecuted by a private law firm, Seward & Kissel, appointed by a federal judge after the U.S. government declined to prosecute me. And the judge never disclosed that the law firm had Chevron as a client. So, essentially, I’m being prosecuted by a Chevron law firm, a partner in a Chevron law firm, a private law firm, who deprived me of my liberty... this is the first corporate prosecution in U.S. history... What’s really happening here is Chevron and these two judges and, really, allies of the fossil fuel industry are trying to use me as a weapon to intimidate activists and lawyers who do this work, who do the frontline work of defending the planet. What’s... at stake is the ability to advocate for human rights in our society."

"We won’t even know if they've done anything, and so, they'll be dropped wherever the federal government wants to drop them, and they'll disappear into our society. We'll never know, until something bad happens, if we have a terrorist."

"Anytime you create a cause of action there, you could call anybody that has the right to go to court a bounty hunter, because they're going in there for damages, which means they're going in to get some type of payment. So you could say that about any cause of action created by any legislature, whether it was federal or state, it could be viewed that way, if you don’t like the actual law."

"If another country wants to buy fossil fuel on the open market, they should look to the United States; we do everything in a much more environmentally conscious manner than anyone else."

"So, what’s really happening here is, Chevron and its allies have used the judiciary to try to attack the very idea of corporate accountability and environmental justice work that leads to significant judgments. And I think they’re not only trying to retaliate against me; they’re trying to send a broader message to the activist community, to the legal community, that these types of cases, that truly challenge the fossil fuel industry, that are intimately connected to the survival of our planet, should not be allowed to happen in court, at least not at this level."

"It has become clear to me in recent months that my unprecedented house arrest is the result of apparent misconduct and conflicts of interest by a number of people in the judiciary. It feels like Chevron has taken over the role of government to deprive its main litigation adversary of his freedom. That’s a terrifying prospect for me and my family, but also for everybody who cares about the nature of freedom and advocacy in our society. I don’t think it has ever happened before. I hope it never happens again."

"We don’t want to be Venezuela. We don't want to be another country where people don’t trust the elections, where there's really no reason to go vote if you don’t know if the integrity of the elections is good. And I think in these states where you have all these mail-in ballots, where you don't have a photo ID and you don't know for sure who’s voting, and on top of that, you don't even verify signatures. You've got a real problem having any credibility in your elections and that harms democracy."

"Ahead of Steven Donziger's sentencing scheduled for Friday, five United Nations human rights experts ruled that the American attorney who won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuadorian courts has been "arbitrarily" detained in the U.S. for 787 days... The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, made up of independent experts appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, said that it was "appalled by uncontested allegations in this case," noting that the U.S. government did not respond to its request for input... the working group called on the U.S. government to "take the steps necessary to remedy the situation of Mr. Steven Donziger without delay and bring it in conformity with the relevant international norms, including those set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

"Meanwhile, the global support for Donziger is growing. Some 29 Nobel laureates, including nine Peace Prize winners, signed a letter calling for] “a judicial remedy for the legal attacks orchestrated by Chevron against Donziger and for the defamation of his character.”"