304 Quotes by John Roberts

This body and legislative bodies in the states are protectors of the people's rights, ... Legislators have the right to protect the rights of the people as much as courts.

I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge. It's the difference between being a judge and being a law professor.

This is a case in which our supposed litigation program to encourage judicial restraint did not get off the ground, and should have,

It is not a process under which senators get to say, 'I want you to rule this way and this way and this way, and if you'll tell me that you'll rule this way and this way and this way, I'll vote for you, ... That's not a bargaining process. Judges are not politicians. They cannot promise to do certain things in exchange for votes.

It's sobering to think of the seventeen chief justices; certainly a solid majority of them have to be characterized as failures. The successful ones are hard to number.

It is not enough that you may think a prior decision is wrongly decided,

This is a difficult business. It has its ups and downs. There are a number of different directions that management could have taken and it became quite clear during the months of December and January ... that they were looking in a different direction for the main person other than me.

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.

Like most people, I resist the labels. I have told people, when pressed, that I prefer to be known as a modest judge. And, to me, that means some of the things that you talked about in those other labels. It means an appreciation that the role of the judge is limited; the judge is to decide the cases before them; they're not to legislate; they're not to execute the laws.