Warren E. Burger famous quotes

03-28-2025

To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Teaching #Fundamentals #Would Be
The trial of a case is a three-legged stool - a judge and two advocates.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Two #Judging #Judgement
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet...to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Hands #Feet #America
We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.
-- Warren E. Burger

#People #Casual #Electrician
There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Long #Risk #Speech
For better or worse, editing is what editors are for; and editing is selection and choice of material. That editors newspaper or broadcast can and do abuse this power is beyond doubt, but that is no reason to deny the discretion Congress provided.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Editing #Editors #Choices
The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Christian #Religious #Tolerance
The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Christian #Religious #Liberty
Judges . . . rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should...
-- Warren E. Burger

#Law #Judging #Public Opinion
[No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Life #Mind #Able
Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Fabric #Crime
There can be no assumption that today's majority is "right" and the Amish or others like them are "wrong." A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no right or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Racism #Different #Erratic
History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Reality #Men #Example
The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily likes of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Exercise #Judging #Car
[I]n constitutional adjudication some steps, which when taken were thought to approach 'the verge,' have become the platform for yet further steps. A certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and it can be a 'downhill thrust' easily set in motion but difficult to ***** or stop.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Taken #Church #Momentum
There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Prayer #Practice #Doubt
A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Poverty #Trials #Judgment
It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to discover a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Taken #Two #Hearing
The notion that most people want black-robed judges, well-dressed lawyers and fine-paneled courtrooms as the setting to resolve their disputes is not correct. People with problems, like people with pains, want relief, and they want it as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Pain #People #Judging
Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Taken #Order #Risk
Doctors still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?
-- Warren E. Burger

#Confidence #Warrior #Gun
Guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant in the criminal trials as we flounder in a morass of artificial rules poorly conceived and often impossible [to apply].
-- Warren E. Burger

#Justice #Guilt #Trials
Is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America....
-- Warren E. Burger

#America #Judging #Challenges
Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Blood #Battle #Trials
It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house.
-- Warren E. Burger

#Giving #Advice #House

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