Quote

A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not, on another occasion, indulge its own will.

Felix Frankfurter

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Popular
Despotism
Court
Thereby
Justice
Indulge
Practice
License
Another
Assurance
Occasion
Yield
Licenses
Occasions
Yields

More quotes by Felix Frankfurter

Image
There is no inevitability in history except as men make it.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
It simply is not true that war never settles anything.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy that represents an element of continuity in law and is rooted in the psychological need to satisfy reasonable expectations.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
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
Image
Is that which was deemed to be of so fundamental a nature as to be written into the Constitution to endure for all times to be the sport of shifting winds of doctrine?
Felix Frankfurter
Image
One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
I know of no title that I deem more honorable than that of Professor of the Harvard Law School.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
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.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
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
Image
The words of the Constitution... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and distresses and disappointments must be a cabbage, not a human being. That is number one.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, good fences make good neighbors.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden-footed.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
After all, advocates, including advocates for States, are like managers of pugilistic and election contestants in that they have a propensity for claiming everything.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.
Felix Frankfurter
Image
Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.
Felix Frankfurter