The Constitution is a pantheon of values, and a lot of hard cases are hard because the Constitution gives no simple rule of decision for the cases in which one of the values is truly at odds with another.
David SouterRead
There is a danger to judicial independence when people have no understanding of how the judiciary fits into the constitutional scheme.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Judicial independence is at risk when the public lacks knowledge about the judiciary's role in the constitution.
David Souter's quote emphasizes the essential role of public understanding in maintaining the independence of the judiciary. When citizens do not grasp how the judicial system operates within the constitutional framework, it can lead to erosion of trust and challenges to judicial independence, which are crucial for upholding justice and democracy.
Themes
Judicial IndependencePublic UnderstandingConstitutionJusticeDemocracy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of legal education for the public.
More from David Souter
All quotes βFor those whose exclusive norm of constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed, 'Brown' must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision.
David SouterRead
The language of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws did not change between 1896 and 1954, and it would be very hard to say that the obvious facts on which 'Plessy' was based had changed.
David SouterRead
The Constitution is no simple contract, not because it uses a certain amount of open-ended language, but because its language grants and guarantees many good things, and good things that compete with each other and can never all be realized, altogether, all at once.
David SouterRead
Similar quotes
In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness
Richard WagnerRead
There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace.
John BunyanRead
The true past departs not, no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but all is still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless change.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
Raymond CarverRead
When one feels no shame in telling a deliberate lie, there is no evil, I tell you, he will not do.
Gautama BuddhaRead