Judges From The United States

"My goal is to work with my colleagues on the bench to help drive change to improve service to the public. These reforms include increasing efficiency and saving public resources, while making sure every person served by our court is treated with dignity and respect."

"I was going to get a gun or a taser or something. I was going to do something to protect myself."

"When I began to really feel frightened at work was when it became evident no entity was going to intervene. The judicial system does not seem equipped to handle really bad behavior, so it inadvertently rewards bullying."

"Adams' legacy nonetheless broke barriers for women in the legal profession and established a precedent for women achieving high political office."

"That Liberty, Which, not the thunder of Bellona's voice, With fleets, and armies, from the British shore, Shall wrest from us."

"Gravity is the most practical qualification of the physician."

"When the patient is dead, it was the disease killed him, not the Doctor. Dead men tell no tales."

"Experience is a great softener of the mind; it gives knowledge."

"A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud."

"There are those who end life feeling the future will nourish their cause. There are those also whose causes pass with themselves. Harry Byrd's cause belonged to the latter category. In the nation a more positive role for federal government was fast becoming an American political axiom; likewise, Harry Byrd's Virginia would soon seem but yesteryear's quaint and curious memento. But Byrd's personal cause- his honesty, courtesy, in short, his humanity- was not tied to time. The greatest men have often urged dated or debatable specifics. George Washington urged against foreign alliances; Thomas Jefferson dreamed of an agrarian utopia; Woodrow Wilson warred against bigness in American life; Robert E. Lee struggled valiantly for a divided nation. History values men as much for what they are for as for what they espouse. Let not its view of balanced budgets determine its judgment of Harry Byrd."

"Harry Byrd and his organizations were rich and valuable parts of any southern uniqueness of history and humanity. Byrd was born of the somber side of southern history. His organization, notwithstanding its faults, was truly coined from the mint of its time. If it was parsimonious, it emerged from a period when Virginia had little of which to give. If it feared deficits, it remembered the state's staggering Reconstruction debts. If it was oligarchic, it was so by reason of long inheritance. If it was regionally oriented, it bore still the scarred tissue of the Civil War. If it was rurally flavored, it respected the power of the farmer's franchise and the state's agrarian heritage. If it was slow- too slow- to change, Virginia had long been changeless."

"Pat Conroy may have come to live among us involuntarily, but he stayed among us by choice and enriched us all for more than fifty years. Many of us saw ourselves reflected in his published words. Some of us he entertained grandly. Others of us he outraged greatly. To all of us, he gave a rare gift. He came to us from afar, like Faulkner and like Wolfe. But I respectfully suggest, in ways more real and more loving than either of them, that he gave to us the opportunity, in the phrase of Burns, "to see ourselves as others see us." For this alone, we should be forever grateful to Pat Conroy, our very own prince of tides. "Good-night, sweet prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2."

"His was a turbulent personality, a complex mixture of joy and despair, but through it all, great love. He loved books and independent bookstores, especially the Old New York Bookshop. Imagine that. He loved his friends, his brothers and sisters, his children and stepchildren, his grandchildren, his legion of readers, who hung on his every word and were enchanted by his characters, the atmosphere of the South Carolina Lowcountry, and his stories- always his stories. But he loved no one more than Sandra, his steadfast wife, Cassandra King. She smoothed out the rough places for him and calmed the turbulence of his life. She loved him unconditionally, as he loved her. She brought him peace at last."

"Pat told me that The Citadel was one of the big reasons he loved South Carolina and the Lowcountry. While other writers of his generation were going to fraternity or sorority parties, he spent his four college years reading during Evening Study Period. He became a member of the Dock Street Theatre, the Charleston Ballet, and the Symphony. He learned about the beauty and charm of cities by studying Charleston and Beaufort."

"Donald Patrick Conroy, born on October 26, 1945, was the best storyteller of our time- very possibly any time. We will never forget Donald Patrick Conroy. He came to live in South Carolina on orders of the United States Marine Corps. In 1961, his father, Colonel Donald Conroy, a Marine aviator who went by the nickname of the Great Santini- perhaps you've heard of him- received orders to report to the air station in Beaufort, South Carolina. Pat was sixteen years old and received this news with dread. He had been to ten schools in eleven years and Beaufort High School would become his third high school."

"He and The Citadel eventually kissed and made up and became great friends after a rocky relationship following publication of The Lords of Discipline. The Citadel has promised to stop using his books as kindling to heat the barracks."

"My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, this is how I feel about whiskey: If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it. But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it. This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise."

"One need not go South to discover the injuries to children which result from discrimination or indifference, too often rationalized on the ground that neighbors did not know about them."

"We have lost a sense of personal responsibility and sensitivity to people, and our faith that we can do more for people who need help if we care. In other words, I don't believe we can have justice without caring, or caring without justice. These are inseparable aspects of life and work for children as they are for adults."

"Surely, the concern for the liberation of women need not and should not be separated from the struggle by women to protect and advance the freedom of all those still denied equal opportunities and full participation in the life of this country. (1973)"

"As case after case came up, I saw the vast chasms between our rhetoric of freedom, equality and charity, and what we were doing to, or not doing for, poor people, especially children."

"My parents were among the first progressive parents who thought their children should always be at the dinner table to be heard as well as seen.""

"I was one of the most fortunate of children because my parents shared so much- in their ideals, their work...And perhaps most important they...never gave us the feeling they were too busy or engaged in anything more important than their life with us."

"By the end of my second year [1926], the great textile strike had broken out in Passaic where I had worked, so I commuted between Yale Law School and Passaic, to the horror of some of the reputable people at Yale."

"I tell myself each time that I am trying to do the best that can be done for this one child in front of me now. And then, starting after court, I try to do what I can for the others like him.'"

"Those were the days of the battles for the right to organize, and the conditions of workers were abominable."

"Passionate concern may lead to errors of judgment, but the lack of passion in the face of human wrong leads to spiritual bankruptcy...""

"Freedom means many things to many people. From my earliest childhood I saw it through the eyes of my parents as both opportunity and challenge to do battle for those in bondage, to achieve freedom of the spirit and mind for one’s self and one’s fellow men. Blessed by parents whose deepest joy was through service to their fellow men, who were deeply moral without ever being self-righteous, who were profoundly religious and therefore not sanctimonious, I learned that love of mankind became meaningful only as it reflected understanding of and love of human beings."

"To compare the actions of people around the country protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and downplays the very real danger that the crowd on January 6 posed to our democracy."

"The country is watching to see what the consequences are for something that has not ever happened in the history of this country before"

"Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass."

"A judge’s rulings should never be affected by political ideology or motivation. I can state unreservedly that should I be confirmed, my rulings will be based on text and precedent, and my decisions will be made solely on the application of the law to the facts"

"Defendant’s four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens."

"There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government beyond sitting at home"

"Judge Chutkan can handle this quite quickly if she wants to and I think she probably will. She was a very efficient judge. She will give each side 10 days to brief it, have a hearing and decide it. She knows whatever she decides is not going to stay with her."

"I'm afraid things have gotten a little bit extreme lately because of the extremism that's trying to take hold in Harris County. I am very proud of my record reaching across the aisle"

"I’m a person that represents everyone in the community, whether they voted for me or not. We’ve been effective so they don’t want me to continue the work and show what effective Democratic leadership can look like in the state"

"I just felt this call to action, to give back and do something about what was happening, and I decided that the most effective way to give back and to make a difference would be by being in charge. That there was no reason why I shouldn't run. I know what needed to change, and I was going to do it."

"We don’t listen to the NRAs about what we do about gun violence and violent crime. We listen to the victims of crime. We do not outsource the environmental protection measures to industry"

"Reaching across the aisle is important. I'll continue to offer to negotiate, but sometimes it's impossible to negotiate with a brick wall"

"We need different voices in government—not for the sake of different voices, but because it actually makes a difference in policy."

"We have got to include all the voices in our democracy. That's how we preserve democracy, that's how we build accountable government, that's how you build responsive government."

"When the white man landed on the shores of the New World, an eclipse, blacker than any that ever darkened the sun, blighted the hopes and happiness of the native people, races then living in tranquility upon their own soil."

"No American ought to turn away from January 6, 2021, until all of America comes to grips with what befell our country that day, and we decide what we want for our democracy from this day, forward. The genius that is America's democracy is this. The Constitution vests all power in "We the People." We agreed in the Constitution to delegate our power to our representatives, only during their time in our service, and at that, exclusively for the purpose of representing our interests in the Nation's Capital, not theirs. Our democracy is the process through which our representatives, using the power that we have delegated to them, in turn and in trust, govern us. We choose in our national elections those who we want to represent us, including most importantly the President of the United States. It is for this simple reason that to steal an election for the presidency from us is to steal our democracy from us."

"America's democracy was almost stolen from us on January 6. Our democracy has never been tested like it was on that day and it will never be tested again as it was then if we learn the lessons of that fateful day. On the other hand, if we fail to learn the lessons that are there to be learned, or worse, deny even that there are lessons there to be learned, we will consign ourselves to another January 6 in the not-too-distant future, and another after that, and another after that. While for some, that is their wish, that cannot be our wish for America."

"As to the first question, we begin where the reconciliation of all broken human relationships, be they broken from war, anger, betrayal, or love, begins — by talking with each other, and listening to one another again, as human beings and fellow citizens who share the same destiny and the same belief in America and hope for her future. For years now, taking the lead from our politicians, we Americans have spoken only coarse, desensitizing, dehumanizing political vile at each other, which enables us to speak to each other without guilt or regret. For too many years now, we have spoken to each other as charlatanic political gladiators in an arena that today has become annihilative of America's future, not promising of that future."

"It is no wonder that America is at war over her democracy. Every day for years now we have borne witness to vicious partisan attacks on the bulwarks of that democracy — our institutions of government and governance and the institutions and instrumentalities of our democracy — by our own political leaders and fellow citizens. Every day for years now we have witnessed vicious partisan attacks on our Institutions of Law themselves, our Nation's Judiciary, and our Constitution and the Laws of the United States — the guardians of that democracy and of our freedom. For years, we have been told by the very people we trust, and entrust, to preserve and to protect our American institutions of democracy and law that these institutions are no longer to be trusted, no longer to be believed in, no longer deserving of cherish and protection. If that is true, then it is because those with whom we entrusted these institutions have themselves betrayed our sacred trust. And, indeed, it does seem at the moment that we no longer agree on our democracy. Nor do we any longer seem to agree on the ideals, values, and principles upon which America was founded and that were so faithfully nurtured and protected by the generations and generations of Americans that came before us. Yet we agree on no other foundational ideals, values, and principles, either. All of a sudden it seems that we are in violent disagreement over what has made America great in the past and over what will make her great in the future. In poetic tragedy, political campaign slogan has become divisive political truth. And there is no reason to believe that agreement about America by we Americans is anywhere on the horizon, if for no other reason than that none of us is interested in agreement. In the moral catatonic stupor America finds itself in today, it is only disagreement that we seek, and the more virulent that disagreement, the better. This is not who we Americans are or who we want to be. Nor is this America or what we want America to be."

"On January 6, 2021, revolutionaries, not patriots, assaulted America and American democracy. The walls of all three of our institutions of democracy were scaled and breached on that appalling day. And almost two years thence, one of America's two political parties cannot even agree whether that day was good or bad, right or wrong. Worse, it cannot agree over whether January 6 was needed, or not. Needed or not. Pause for a moment and reflect on that. The former president and his party cannot decide whether the revolt at the United States Capitol to disrupt and prevent the constitutional counting of the votes for the presidency was needed, and therefore whether another revolt might be needed at a future date to accomplish that which the previous revolt failed to accomplish."

"Reeling from twin wars, leaderless, and rudderless, America is in need of help. Our polarized political leaders have shamefully and shamelessly failed us. They have summoned our worst demons at the very moment when we needed summoned our better angels. As a consequence, America finds itself in desperate need of either a reawakening and quickening to the vision, truths, values, principles, beliefs, hopes, and dreams upon which the country was founded and that have made America the greatest nation in the world — a revival of America and the American spirit. Or, if it is to be, we are in need of a revival around a new vision, new truths, new values, new principles, new beliefs, new hopes and dreams that hopefully could once again bind our divided nation together into the more perfect union that "We the People" originally ordained and established it to be. We cannot hobble along much longer, politically paralyzed and hopelessly divided, directionless and undecided as to which revival it will be — if any at all. Where do we begin? This is the easier question. Who has the patriotic and political courage to go first? This is the harder question."

"False claims that our elections have been stolen from us corrupt our democracy, as they corrupt us. To continue to insist and persist in the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is itself an affront to our democracy and to the Constitution of the United States — an affront without precedent. Those who think that because America is a republic, theft and corruption of our national elections and electoral process are not theft and corruption of our democracy are sorely mistaken. America is both a republic and a representative democracy, and therefore a sustained attack on our national elections is a fortiori an attack on our democracy, any political theory otherwise notwithstanding."