David Garrow Quotations

The court will be in an extremely unsettled and uncertain situation until Justice O'Connor's successor is confirmed and seated. No one including the justices themselves will know for sure whether the nine justices who hear a case will be the same nine who will decide it.

Most of the trains haven't arrived yet at the station.

I come away with a very strong impression that Roberts will be a much more classical judicial restraint justice than any of the current justices. He betrays no real policy agenda.

Given that there is no evidence this man has ever lost his cool in his adult life, I don't think they are going to lay a finger on him.

I don't think where someone's law degree is from is necessarily a hindrance, ... There is an advantage to going to Harvard or Yale or Chicago.

He was thinking of this in the medical framework of Rochester, Minn. He imagined abortions would be performed by a family physician or in a hospital.

He's certainly a newbie in the formal sense, but he is as personally familiar to them as any newbie outsider could be.

There are no real blockbuster cases on the docket so far. But there are a number of unusual cases out there, issues the justices want to revisit.

It is not surprising in the least that a president from Texas would nominate an SMU graduate to the Supreme Court, ... It would have been surprising for JFK.

Judge Roberts has a combination of substantive expertise and stylistic smoothness ... He's likely to fly through this without anyone laying a fingernail on him.

I think this is as close to a sure thing as we can get.

The overarching theme in the questionnaire, I think, is trying too hard to gin herself up, ... She makes it sound like the White House counsel's office is the solicitor general, which it's not. She's presenting it as an office with major constitutional responsibility.

Politically or ideologically oriented evaluations of Chief Justice Rehnquist should not overlook what a successful and popular chief justice he was within the Court as the justices' presiding officer, .. The contrast between Rehnquist's undeniably happy Court and that of his predecessor, Warren E. Burger, could not have been greater.

Prior to Roe , ... whether one could obtain a legal abortion in the face of an unwanted pregnancy was a crap shoot. For 30 years now, it's been a constitutionally guaranteed right

The phrasing of it is so atypical, almost original. I think it's an important indicator of what kind of justice he might be.

Within the world of Austin and (Bush's) growing up in Texas, SMU is more than perfectly respectable, It certainly is above, say, Baylor in that sense, ... SMU may not quite be ranked by anybody with Duke, Vanderbilt, Emory or Tulane. But it is in that family even if not atop that family.

Everything we know about Roberts, needless to say, suggests he has exactly the qualities needed in the chief.

I very much think Sandra Day O'Connor will indeed remain a 'real' justice.

the serious constitutional heavy lifting is done in the Justice Department.

This court has been very aggressive in defining the bounds of the other branches, and Congress in particular, ... And that has to do with Rehnquist's vision as much as anybody's.

This is a case in which substantial damage could be done to abortion rights without anyone seriously being able to claim that Roe v. Wade is in danger.

Almost certainly on the table here is an awful lot more than the federal partial-birth ban.

A committed conservative with interpersonal skills equal to or superior to Rehnquist's would be a far more effective chief justice than a nominee of equal intellect who lacks those graces.

It is personal connections and relationships. And if you look back to a Franklin Roosevelt, a John Kennedy, they were products of that elite world,

For 30 years, ever since John Paul Stevens, there has been an unbroken pattern of naming sitting appellate judges,

The No. 1 thing is that this is the entire court - especially O'Connor - again trying to turn down the temperature on the issue and force both sides toward the middle. This is the court saying: We don't want to give either side all or nothing. We're going to force you to split the loaf.

It will be his court. And we'll know soon enough what that means.

The volume is being turned up on both sides, both in the attacks on the court and in the justices' response.

I just can't imagine a scenario in which the White House seriously risks a defeat.

I believe he believes in shrinking the social or political footprint of the court. But can you think of any current justices, right or left, who believe the same thing?

The evidence in this poll suggests that race relations in America may be distinctly better than most of us think they are, ... Bearing the Cross.

The health exception is based on professional respect and regard for doctors. Health is anything a doctor says it is, and neither legislators nor judges should be redefining it. I don't think it can be abused.