57 Quotes by Robert H. Jackson

While the Nation has forbidden monopoly by one set of laws it has been creating them by another. Patent laws, valuable as they may be in some respects, often father monopoly.

Any court which undertakes by its legal processes to enforce civil liberties needs the support of an enlightened and vigorous public opinion which will be intelligent and discriminating as to what cases really are civil liberties cases and what questions really are involved in those cases.

But the validity of a doctrine does not depend on whose ox it gores.

This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added.

If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

Had the jury convicted on proper instructions it would be the end of the matter. But juries are not bound by what seems inescapable logic to judges.

It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.

In this court the parties changed positions as nimbly as if dancing a quadrille.

Not every defeat of authority is a gain for individual freedom, nor every judicial rescue of a convict a victory for liberty.