Quote

Guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant in the criminal trials as we flounder in a morass of artificial rules poorly conceived and often impossible [to apply].

Warren E. Burger

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Warren E. Burger
Age: 87 †
Born: 1907
Born: September 17
Died: 1995
Died: June 25
Former Chief Justice Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
St Paul
Minnesota
Warren Earl Burger
Justice
Artificial
Often
Innocence
Flounder
Trials
Morass
Criminals
Poorly
Guilt
Conceived
Rules
Irrelevant
Becomes
Apply
Impossible
Criminal

More quotes by Warren E. Burger

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The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily lives of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week.
Warren E. Burger
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Concepts of justice must have hands and feet...to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
Warren E. Burger
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The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts.
Warren E. Burger
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Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood.
Warren E. Burger
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The notion that most people want black-robed judges, well-dressed lawyers and fine-paneled courtrooms as the setting to resolve their disputes is not correct. People with problems, like people with pains, want relief, and they want it as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
Warren E. Burger
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Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values.
Warren E. Burger
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Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.
Warren E. Burger
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It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to discover a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.
Warren E. Burger
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There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.
Warren E. Burger
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To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
Warren E. Burger
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Doctors still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?
Warren E. Burger
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We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.
Warren E. Burger
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[No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.
Warren E. Burger
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History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.
Warren E. Burger
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There may be some incorrigible human beings who cannot be changed except by God's own mercy to that one person.
Warren E. Burger
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The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.
Warren E. Burger
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It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house.
Warren E. Burger
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There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.
Warren E. Burger
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A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.
Warren E. Burger
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[I]n constitutional adjudication some steps, which when taken were thought to approach 'the verge,' have become the platform for yet further steps. A certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and it can be a 'downhill thrust' easily set in motion but difficult to retard or stop.
Warren E. Burger