Arlen Specter Decisions Quotations

I think there needs to be a collegial, modest approach to try to bring the court together so that we have some idea of continuity and what these decisions mean and their staying power,

I think if we're to re-establish (the Congress') constitutional role, to control the purse strings, we've got to say that when it comes to local control versus a Washington straitjacket, the people of the United States want the education decisions made in the local school districts, not in the White House.

There has been a generalization that justices like to retire at the end of a term so as not to disrupt the work of the court, ... if you were to have a 4-4 court, with its proclivity for being evenly divided, you wouldn't have decisions for the cutting edge of all the questions.

These decisions pose two major problems, ... A lack of stability or predictability in the law because the two cases, decided three years apart, are virtually indistinguishable; and, two, the court's judicial activism in functioning as a super legislature.

It naturally raises cynicism when you have so many 5-4 decisions from our Supreme Court and 4-3 decisions out of the Florida Supreme Court and that is not healthy, ... But our republic will survive.

The new chief justice will have his work cut out to try and bring consensus to the court, ... There is much to be done to move away from the 5-4 decisions of the court.