Potter Stewart Quotes

1915–1985 United States

Potter Stewart (January 23, 1915–December 7, 1985) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving on the Court from 1958 to 1981.

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Random Potter Stewart quote

11 quotes

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

Abortion is inherently different from other medical procedures because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life.

But just because you have a right to do something doesn’t mean it’s right to do it.

The Law And Potter Stewart: An Interview With Justice Potter Stewart (1983)

For when everything is classified, then nothing is classified and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless and to be manipulated by those intent on self-protection or self-promotion.

The Fourth Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.

[I can't define what is pornography.] "But I know it when I see it."

opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964)

Several decisions of this Court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

As far as I'm concerned, the mark of a good justice or a good judge is an opinion you can read and have no idea whether it was written by a man or a woman, a Republican or a Democrat or a Christian or a Jew. The most important thing is quality and competence and temperament and character and diligence.

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of [hard-core pornography] material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Potter Stewart (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.