Potter Stewart

We dedicated ourselves to a powerful idea - organic law rather than naked power. There seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation.

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

A person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not give rise to probable cause to search that person.

It must always be remembered that what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.

Swift justice demands more than just swiftness.

The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.

For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.

To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him.