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The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.
Felix Frankfurter
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Felix Frankfurter
Age: 82 †
Born: 1882
Born: November 15
Died: 1965
Died: February 22
Former Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
Vienna
Austria
Ultimate
Liberty
Constitutionality
Touchstone
Touchstones
Libertarianism
Libertarian
Constitution
More quotes by Felix Frankfurter
To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden-footed.
Felix Frankfurter
One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution... But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.
Felix Frankfurter
The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.
Felix Frankfurter
It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.
Felix Frankfurter
Future lawyers should be more aware that law is not a system of abstract logic, but the web of arrangements, rooted in history but also in hopes, for promoting to a maximum the full use of a nation's resources and talents.
Felix Frankfurter
There is torture of mind as well as body the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.
Felix Frankfurter
Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.
Felix Frankfurter
The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.
Felix Frankfurter
It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
Felix Frankfurter
The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.
Felix Frankfurter
It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of laws to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it.
Felix Frankfurter
If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, good fences make good neighbors.
Felix Frankfurter
It is important not to give the appearance of a predisposed mind. And it is more important not to let the mind become predisposed.
Felix Frankfurter
The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.
Felix Frankfurter
It would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of constitutional history has cast upon this Court 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.
Felix Frankfurter
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 charge against an accused out of his own mouth.
Felix Frankfurter
To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
Felix Frankfurter
The eternal struggle in the law between constancy and change is largely a struggle between history and reason, between past reason and present needs.
Felix Frankfurter
If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.
Felix Frankfurter
No judge writes on a wholly clean slate.
Felix Frankfurter