Felix Frankfurter: Trending quotes

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Felix Frankfurter: 134   quotes 0   likes

“Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.”

Speech accepting an award from the National Institute for Immigrant Welfare, Biltmore Hotel, New York (May 11, 1933).
Other writings
Context: Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep. I can express with very limited adequacy the passionate devotion to this land that possesses millions of our people, born, like myself, under other skies, for the privilege that that this county has bestowed in allowing them to partake of its fellowship.

“It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guarantee of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind.”

Writing for the court, Milk Wagon Drivers Union of Chicago, Local 753. v. Meadowmoor Dairies, Inc., 312 U.S. 287 (1941).
Judicial opinions
Context: It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guarantee of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind. It was in order to avert force and explosions due to restrictions upon rational modes of communication that the guarantee of free speech was given a generous scope. But utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution.

“National unity is the basis of national security.”

Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940).
Judicial opinions
Context: National unity is the basis of national security. To deny the legislature the right to select appropriate means for its attainment presents a totally different order of problem from that of the propriety of subordinating the possible ugliness of littered streets to the free expression opinion through handbills.

“But answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.”

Dissenting, Priebe and Sons v. United States, 332 U.S. 407, 420 (1947).
Judicial opinions
Context: If one starts with the assumption that, in the absence of specific Congressional authority, a fixed rule of law precludes contracting officers from providing in a Government contract terms reasonably calculated to assure its performance even though there be no money loss through a particular default, there is no problem. But answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.

“Judicial judgment must take deep account…of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.”

Quoted in National Observer (Silver Spring, Maryland, March 1, 1965).
Other writings

“Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines”

Dissenting in Pearce v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 315 U.S. 543, 558 (1942).
Judicial opinions
Context: The line must follow some direction of policy, whether rooted in logic or experience. Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines.

“Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand.”

Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 540-41 (1961).
Judicial opinions
Context: Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i. e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system — a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.

“The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.”

Dissenting in New York v. United States, 331 U.S. 284, 353 (1947).
Judicial opinions

“Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.”

Dissenting, Henslee v. Union Planters National Bank & Trust Co., 335 U.S. 600 (1949).
Judicial opinions

“To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden-footed.”

Cobbledick v. United States, 309 U.S. 323, 324 (1940).
Judicial opinions

“The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.”

Dennis v. United States, 241 U.S. 494, 556 (1951).
Judicial opinions

“Of compelling consideration is the fact that words acquire scope and function from the history of events which they summarize.”

Phelps Dodge Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 313 U.S. 177, 185-186 (1941).
Judicial opinions

“[It is anomalous] to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.”

Writing for the court, Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952). The unanimous decision reversed the conviction of an alleged drug addict because evidence was obtained by forced stomach pumping.
Judicial opinions

“Ambiguity lurks in generality and may thus become an instrument of severity.”

McComb v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 336 U.S. 187, 197 (1949).
Judicial opinions

“The indispensible judicial requisite is intellectual humility.”

Concurring, American Federation of Labor v. American Sash & Door Co., 335 U.S. 538 (1949).
Judicial opinions