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Robert H. Jackson: 192 quotes4 likes

“Nothing in our Constitution is plainer than that declaration of a war is entrusted only to Congress. Of course, a state of war may in fact exist without a formal declaration. But no doctrine that the Court could promulgate would seem to me more sinister and alarming than that a President whose conduct of foreign affairs is so largely uncontrolled, and often even is unknown, can vastly enlarge his mastery over the internal affairs of the country by his own commitment of the Nation's armed forces to some foreign venture.”

Robert H. Jackson

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) (concurring)
Judicial opinions

“No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role.”

Robert H. Jackson

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) (concurring)
Judicial opinions

“The plans of Adolf Hitler for aggression were just as secret as Mein Kampf, of which over six million copies were published in Germany. He not only openly advocated overthrowing the Treaty of Versailles, but made demands which went far beyond a mere rectification of its alleged injustices (GB-128). He avowed an intention to attack neighboring states and seize their lands, which he said would have to be won with "the power of a triumphant sword."”

Robert H. Jackson

Here, for every German to hearken to, were the "ancestral voices prophesying war."
Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)

“We can afford no liberties with liberty itself.”

Robert H. Jackson

United States v. Spector, 343 US 169, 180 (1952) (dissenting)
Judicial opinions

“Of course, such judicial misconstruction theoretically can be cured by constitutional amendment. But the period of gestation of a constitutional amendment, or of any law reform, is reckoned in decades usually; in years, at least. And, after all, as the Court itself asserted in overruling the minimum-wage cases, it may not be the Constitution that was at fault.”

Robert H. Jackson

Source: The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy: A Study in Crisis in American Power Politics (1941), P. 297

“But an escape less self-depreciating was taken by Lord Westbury, who, it is said, rebuffed a barrister's reliance upon an earlier opinion of his Lordship: "I can only say that I am amazed that a man of my intelligence should have been guilty of giving such an opinion". If there are other ways of gracefully and good-naturedly surrendering former views to a better considered position, I invoke them all.”

Robert H. Jackson

Quoting Lord Westbury. McGrath v. Kristensen, 340 U.S. 162, 178 (1950) (concurring)
Judicial opinions

“Something happens to a man when he puts on a judicial robe, and I think it ought to. The change is very great and requires psychological change within a man to get into an attitude of deciding other people's controversies, instead of waging them. It really calls for quite a changed attitude. Some never make it - and I am not sure I have.”

Robert H. Jackson

Reported in Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, 4 The Justices of the United States Supreme Court 1789-1969, 2563 (1969)

“The office of the lawyer, however poorly filled, is too delicate, personal and confidential to be occupied by a corporation.”

Robert H. Jackson

"Functions of the Trust Company in the Field of Law", 52 New York State Bar Association Report 142 (1929)

“Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity, and a citizen of California by residence. No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here, he is not law-abiding and well-disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.”

Robert H. Jackson

Judicial opinions, Korematsu v. United States (1944)

“While the Declaration was directed against an excess of authority, the Constitution was directed against anarchy.”

Robert H. Jackson

Source: The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy: A Study in Crisis in American Power Politics (1941), P. 8

“I should say the defendants have done just that for which they are indicted. If I might agree to their conviction without creating a precedent, I cheerfully would do so. I can see in their teachings nothing but humbug, untainted by any trace of truth. But that does not dispose of the constitutional question whether misrepresentation of religious experience or belief is prosecutable; it rather emphasizes the danger of such prosecutions.”

Robert H. Jackson

78 U.S. 92.
Judicial opinions, United States v. Ballard (1944)

“The Court's reasoning adds up to this: The Commission must be sustained because of its accumulated experience in solving a problem with which it had never before been confronted! I give up. Now I realize fully what Mark Twain meant when he said, 'The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.”

Robert H. Jackson

SEC v. Chenery Corporation, 332 U.S. 194, 213 (1947) (dissenting)
Judicial opinions

“I do not know whether it is the view of the Court that a judge must be thick-skinned or just thick-headed, but nothing in my experience or observation confirms the idea that he is insensitive to publicity. Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame — a good public name — is, as Milton said, the "last infirmity of noble mind", it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.”

Robert H. Jackson

Craig v. Harney, 331 U. S. 367, 396 (1947)
Judicial opinions

“Often his name was, in a generation or two, forgotten. It was from this brotherhood that America has drawn its statesmen and its judges. A free and self-governing Republic stands as a monument for the little-known and unremembered as well as for the famous men of our profession.”

Robert H. Jackson

"Tribute to Country Lawyers: A Review", 30 A.B.A Journal 139 (1944)

“We granted certiorari, and in this Court the parties changed positions as nimbly as if dancing a quadrille.”

Robert H. Jackson

Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U.S. 83, 87 (1953)
Judicial opinions

“Our people do not want barren theories from their democracy. Maury Maverick has expressed very quaintly, but clearly, what they really want when he says: 'We Americans want to talk, pray, think as we please — and eat regular.”

Robert H. Jackson

Speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco (1939), reported in Eugene C. Gerhart, America's Advocate: Robert H. Jackson (1958), p. 456

“Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.”

Robert H. Jackson

United States v. Wunderlich, 342 U.S. 98, 103 (1951)
Judicial opinions

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

Robert H. Jackson

International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945, Dept. of State Pub.No. 3080 (1949), p. 330
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)

“It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.”

Robert H. Jackson

343 U.S. 324-325
Judicial opinions, Zorach v. Clauson (1952)

“The power of citizenship as a shield against oppression was widely known from the example of Paul's Roman citizenship, which sent the centurion scurrying to his higher-ups with the message: "Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman."”

Robert H. Jackson

Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160, 182 (1941)
Judicial opinions