Byron White: Court

Byron White was Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, American football player. Explore interesting quotes on court.
Byron White: 16   quotes 0   likes

“As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.”

Byron White

Dissenting from the decision of the US Supreme Court in Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 at 222 (1973); also applied to Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

Exercises

“The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution…. There should be, therefore, great resistance to … redefining the category of rights deemed to be fundamental. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily takes to itself further authority to govern the country without express constitutional authority.”

Byron White

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986).

Law , Country

“The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy, and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal, and have done so for a very long time…. Respondent would have us announce, as the Court of Appeals did, a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do.”

Byron White

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986).

Law , Time

“The same qualities that made him a memorable jurist would make him a lightning rod for fierce opposition if he were named to the Supreme Court now.”

Byron White

USA Today, April 17, 2002, quoted in US Senate Republican Policy Committee article, 25 April 2002, "The Left's Iron-Clad Litmus Test on Abortion: Justice White Could Not Be Confirmed Today".

Making love

“I cannot think of a single answer that I made in the years that I argued before the Court while Justice White sat on it that seemed to satisfy him. While I won a number of cases that I argued before him, and he voted for my side in most of them, I never had the sense that anything I said pleased him. White, a former All-American running back (whose much-repeated college nickname, Whizzer, was one that appalled him), was no fan of press claims for broad First Amendment protection. He invariably asked questions that were both pointed and powerful.”

Byron White

Floyd Abrams, Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment, (Viking Press, 2005), p. 71.

Sense , Thinking , Justice , Question