John Paul Stevens

It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.

It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.

I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.

While money is used to finance speech, money is not speech.

But I really think it's a very unfortunate part of our judicial system and I would feel much, much better if more states would really consider whether they think the benefits outweigh the very serious potential injustice, because in these cases the emotions are very, very high on both sides and to have stakes as high as you do in these cases, there is a special potential for error. We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.

For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation.

I think maybe the people in elected positions are more interested in preserving their jobs than in doing the best job possible.

When I signed on to letting the death penalty back in, I thought the procedural protections against executing an innocent person were stronger than they turned out to be.

All I can say is I did the best I could, and I didn't do well enough on many occasions.

If you're interested in the job and in the kind of work that's done, you have to have an interest in who's going to fill your shoes.

The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.

Even in high school, a rule that permits only one point of view to be expressed is less likely to produce correct answers than the open discussion of countervailing views.