Trivial facts are often the best hints to what is going on.
JOHN ROBERTSTrivial facts are often the best hints to what is going on.
JOHN ROBERTSPeople, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society.
JOHN ROBERTSAnytime you get nine people together, whether it’s at a party or it’s in the conference room of the Supreme Court, you do have to maintain some order, or it does kind of degenerate into squabbling pretty quickly.
JOHN ROBERTSBy ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.
JOHN ROBERTSI think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge. It’s the difference between being a judge and being a law professor.
JOHN ROBERTSYou can’t fight for your rights if you don’t know what they are.
JOHN ROBERTSYou don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you? As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.
JOHN ROBERTSThe way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
JOHN ROBERTSThe Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.
JOHN ROBERTSThe Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.
JOHN ROBERTSSometimes it’s just surreal out there, while you’re running a marathon. People just standing out in the cold, even the rain, cheering for you, blasting music for you. It’s an awesome show of camaraderie and community.
JOHN ROBERTSI think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge.
JOHN ROBERTSPeople, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society. Those failures – joined with the similar failures of others – can readily have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
JOHN ROBERTSAn important function of the Supreme Court is to provide guidance, As a lower court judge, I appreciate clear guidance from the Supreme Court.
JOHN ROBERTSJudges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them.
JOHN ROBERTSIf the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me, … But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win because my obligation is to the Constitution.
JOHN ROBERTS