Quote

Pulling a crystalline, cogent rule out of the murk of the court's First Amendment, public forum, and Establishment Clause doctrine is an act of creation too complicated for mere mortals.

Dahlia Lithwick

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dahlia Lithwick
Court
Amendment
Mere
Amendments
Creation
Pulling
Cogent
Public
Establishment
Crystalline
Firsts
Mortals
Clause
First
Doctrine
Forum
Complicated
Clauses
Rule
Forums

More quotes by Dahlia Lithwick

Image
For the most part, much of the legal world's attention has been focused on Donald Trump and his attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge who is currently presiding over the Trump University fraud cases in California. Trump somehow managed to offend surprising numbers of establishment Republicans.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
Sonia Sotomayor is uniquely and exquisitely sensitive to race issues because she is a Latina.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
I'm hardly the first person to say that you've [Jeffrey Rosen] written a book about a person who has more to say about the current state of being than almost anyone, Louis Brandeis, and yet nobody is talking about Louis Brandeis.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
Donald Verrilli has argued 37 cases in five years on behalf of the [Barak] Obama administration. Many of them turned out to be truly landmark cases. He is the seventh-longest-serving solicitor general in American history.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
I just don't think we think about jurists as rock stars or great thinkers, particularly in the political world.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
There is no rest stop on the misinformation highway.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
There's such a kind of complicated line between politics and the law and we don't sit around and say, hey, you know, what would Oliver Wendell Holmes have had to say to this.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
In [Philip] Howard's view, our reliance on law, lawyers, and lawsuits has turned Americans into fat, neurotic cowards who 'go through the day looking over their shoulder instead of where they want to go.'
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
A lot of conservative writers have twisted that argument in the conversation around Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel and said this is identity politics as played by liberals. And that I think what they're trying to say is that progressives are the first to say.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel has not said anything, and in fact, cannot say anything. But I would even broaden it out to, you know, judges who are victims of attack ads in say state Supreme Court elections can't talk back. Judges are really barred from commenting on this kind of huge public hue and cry.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
Am I right in saying that the locust of this problem is simply that judges in America are half political animals and half oracular demigods?
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
The First Aphorism of Religion Cases: Only the religious convictions of other people are weird. Yours are perfectly rational.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
The Framers were no more interested in binding future Americans to a set of divinely inspired commandments than any of us would wish to be bound by them.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
I think particularly on the left, progressives wanted more bombast and more.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
Never believe in any faith younger than you are.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
On the one hand we want to preserve the integrity of the judicial branch, and we want to talk about judicial independence, and how damaging and dangerous it is when Donald Trump calls out Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel. And at the same time, at the end of the day, judges work for us and we can recall them and we can impeach them.
Dahlia Lithwick
Image
The criticism from the other side of [race] debate - and these are not necessarily I think defenders of [Donald] Trump, but they're certainly quick to say, you know, if you're going to live by the race card, you die by the race card.
Dahlia Lithwick