74 quotes
We can afford no liberties with liberty itself.
Procedural fairness, if not all that originally was meant by due process of law, is at least what it most uncompromisingly requires.
But when notice is a person's due, process which is a mere gesture is not 'due process.'
Not every defeat of authority is a gain for individual freedom, nor every judicial rescue of a convict a victory for liberty.
The Task of Maintaining Our Liberties: The Role of the Judiciary (1953)
A confession is wholly and incontestably voluntary only if a guilty person gives himself up to the law and becomes his own accuser.
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
Even Schacht showed that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any story which succeeds.
The Executive, except for recommendation and veto, has no legislative power.
The result is that constitutional precedents are accepted only at their current valuation and have a mortality rate almost as high as their authors.
The Task of Maintaining Our Liberties: The Role of the Judiciary (1953)
Civil liberties had their origin and must find their ultimate guaranty in the faith of the people. If that faith should be lost, five or nine men in Washington could not long supply its want.
Now, if any fundamental assumption underlies our system, it is that guilt is personal and not inheritable.
Procedural fairness and regularity are of the indispensable essence of liberty.
While the Declaration was directed against an excess of authority, the Constitution was directed against anarchy.
The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy: A Study in Crisis in American Power Politics (1941)
Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.
The duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens.
It is hardly lack of due process for the Government to regulate that which it subsidizes.
The idea that a Constitution should protect individual nonconformity is essentially American, and is the last thing in the world that Communists will tolerate.
American Communications Association v. Douds (1950)
We granted certiorari, and in this Court the parties changed positions as nimbly as if dancing a quadrille.
The mere state of being without funds is a neutral fact — constitutionally an irrelevance, like race, creed, or color.
He who must search a haystack for a needle is likely to end up with the attitude that the needle is not worth the search.