While the U.S. Supreme Court as an institution features prominently in the history of this country, the men and women who compose that tribunal are unknown to most Americans.
In their honor, here are the seven best quotes from Supreme Court justices about freedom, liberty and the United States.
“If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.”
Justice Antonin Scalia on Texas v. Johnson, the decision that struck down a state law banning the desecration of the flag
“May it be long before the people of the United States shall cease to take a deep and pervading interest in the Fourth of July, as the birthday of our national life, or the event which then occurred shall be subordinated to any other of our national history.”
Justice Samuel Freeman Miller
“Those who won our independence valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.”
Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney v. California
“The framers of the Constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.”
Justice William Douglas, Beauharnais v. Illinois
“Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.”
Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution
“But our society — unlike most in the world — presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas; that is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is this article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world.”
Justice William Douglas, Paris Adult Theatre v. Slaton
“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”
Justice Thurgood Marshall, Stanley v. Georgia
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