16 Quotes by Rose Bird

...testifying for Dr. Privitera...To these 19 cancer victims, the enforcement of (California) Health and Safety Code Sect. 1701.1, the denial of them medical treatment, albeit unorthodox, albeit unapproved by a state agency, must surely take on a Kafka-esque, a nightmare quality. No demonstrated public anger, no compelling interest of the state warrants an Orwellian intrusion into the most private of zones of privacy.

We have probed the earth, excavated it, burned it, ripped things from it, buried things in it.... That does not fit my definition of a good tenant. If we were here on a month-to-month basis, we would have been evicted long ago.

We are incarcerating more people on a per capita basis in California than any country in the world other than South Africa or the Soviet Union.

It is easy to be popular. It is not easy to be just.

Its always the minorities who arent a part of the mainstream who define what the limits... of the majority are going to be.

My role isn’t to be politically smart. My role is to do what’s right under the constitution. And if that’s politically unpopular, so be it.

Courts are an aristocratic institution in a democracy. That’s the dilemma for an institution that has the function of reviewing the will of the people. We’re bound to be “anti-majoritarian.”