Robert H. Jackson (1892 – 1954)
United States Attorney General (1940–1941) and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941–1954).
The duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens.
He who must search a haystack for a needle is likely to end up with the attitude that the needle is not worth the search.
The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.
The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation, than any other person in America.
While the Declaration was directed against an excess of authority, the Constitution was directed against anarchy.
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.
When the Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.
The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion - except for the sect that can win political power.
He had a quiet courage, which never led to a bellow of defiance but which permitted him to take in every instance the action he thought best without discernible thought of criticism or personal injury. He was modest in manner, yet supremely confident of himself and his judgment. He had a calm which no crisis could disturb, and standards of honorable conduct which were both rigorous and unshakeable.
But we have grounds to assume also that the normal proportion of them are subject to that very human weakness, especially displayed in Washington, which leads men to "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning."
But we must not forget that in our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds — that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.
When we went to school we were told that we were governed by laws, not men. As a result of that, many people think there is no need to pay any attention to judicial candidates because judges merely apply the law by some mathematical formula and a good judge and a bad judge all apply the same kind of law. The fact is that the most important part of a judge's work is the exercise of judgment and that the law in a court is never better than the common sense judgment of the judge that is presiding.
There is no such thing as an achieved liberty; like electricity, there can be no substantial storage and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out.
[T]he effect of the religious freedom Amendment to our Constitution was to take every form of propagation of religion out of the realm of things which could directly or indirectly be made public business, and thereby be supported in whole or in part at taxpayers' expense. That is a difference which the Constitution sets up between religion and almost every other subject matter of legislation, a difference which goes to the very root of religious freedom[...] This freedom was first in the Bill of Rights because it was first in the forefathers' minds; it was set forth in absolute terms, and its strength is its rigidity. It was intended not only to keep the states' hands out of religion, but to keep religion's hands off the state, and, above all, to keep bitter religious controversy out of public life by denying to every denomination any advantage from getting control of public policy or the public purse.
We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.