If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion.

Without Liberty, Law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without Law, Liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.

There aren't any liberals left in New York. They've all been mugged by now.

Some people suggest that the problem is the separation of powers. If you had a parliamentary system, the struggle for power would not result in such complex peace treaties that empower so many different people to pursue so many contradictory aims.

I mean that the function of the police is to solve problems that have law-enforcement consequences in a way that is based on a genuine partnership with the neighborhood in both the venting of the problem and the discussion of the solution.

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.

I believe that the high rates of property crime (and some of the increase in violent crime) are part of the price you pay for freedom.

But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.

Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.

I will have an administrative system where there is no way to extricate red tape.

A government without the power of defense! It is a solecism.

In terms of other functions, we are making a mistake about insisting on a public school monopoly.

There is no way the American public will sit still for the banning of or putting any significant restrictions on the kinds of guns they want.

If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion.

There are no more liberals They've all been mugged.

Community-based policing has now come to mean everything. It's a slogan. It has come to mean so many different things that people who endorse it, such as the Congress of the United States, do not know what they are talking about.

I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care.

One unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise - and occasionally the application - of the view that all people, and not just one's own kind, are entitled to fair treatment.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

The court of last resort is no longer the Supreme Court. It's "Nightline."

I would not like to be the only woman on the court.

There are certain promises you make that are more sacred than anything that happens in a court of law, I don't care how many Bibles you put your hand on.

Towards the end of the Lord Chamberlain's era, when his hold was being loosened, private prosecutions began to happen. A member of staff at the Royal Court ordered to stop the play, and the police were brought in.

If in any divination the Tenth Card should be a Court Card, it shews that the subject of the divination falls ultimately into the hands of a person represented by that card, and its end depends mainly on him.

All of our affairs, since the union of crowns, have been managed by the advice of English ministers, and the principal offices of the kingdom filled with such men, as the court of England knew would be subservient to their designs.

One camp accepts the Court's limits on contributions but urges the reinstatement of spending caps - even if this requires a constitutional amendment subjecting political speech, if not pornography, to government regulation.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.

I always try to keep a pretty conservative demeanor on the court.

I didn't know how much I cared about having a woman on the court until the day there was a woman on the court.

And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna give five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for Contempt of Court, but we're gonna kill ya!

I don't play full court anymore. I just play half-court.

Many words are not wanting to show that the particular view of each court occasioned the dangers which affected the public tranquillity; yet the whole is charged to my account. Nor is this sufficient.

You get a lawyer whether you're in a military tribunal or whether you're in a federal court, number one. The attorney general decided that the court with the biggest - with the greatest venue, with the best jurisdiction was the New York court. That was the right decision to make.

All the culture war issues will be settled by the court.

I got the chance to argue my first case in Supreme Court, a criminal case arising in Alabama that involved the right of a defendant to counsel at a critical stage in a capital case before a trial.

If it gets to the Supreme Court, I'll have the directors of every museum in the country as expert testimony that my work is legitimate art.

I could see flames from the windows of my chambers. For the next three or four days we had major rioting here in Washington and I stayed at the court day and night.

Five guys on the court working together can achieve more than five talented individuals who come and go as individuals.

The family is a court of justice which never shuts down for night or day.

Most people compliment me on maintaining my femininity while I'm on the court. People like the fact that I model. My fans or little girls always say they want to play sports, but also want to be a model like me and I think that's great.

There is - you know, there's receipts for rented cars and license plates and guns and hand prints and palm prints and fingerprints. You know, I want to wait until I'm in a court.

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.

It lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Do we want an Attorney General who will play politics with the law, play politics with the court and just play politics with international conventions designed to protect our troops? I do not want to play that kind of politics. I am going to vote against Alberto Gonzales.

I said in court a long time ago that I didn't see that the Soviet Union was significantly helped by the information I gave them, nor that the United States was significantly harmed.

When a nominee for the Supreme Court, one of only nine lifetime appointments, makes an overtly brazen racist comment about tens of millions of American citizens, we don't need lectures. What we need to do is to confront her with what she said and what it says about her.

When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.