John Roberts Rights Quotations

President Ronald Reagan used to speak of the Soviet constitution, and he noted that it purported to grant wonderful rights of all sorts to people. But those rights were empty promises, because that system did not have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law and enforce those rights.

Mr. Jones suggests in his letter that you would have reacted differently to an alleged civil rights violation, and in a thinly veiled threat, asserts that the alleged insensitivity of the administration to fundamentalist Christians will not go unnoticed by that sizable voting block,

We must evaluate not only his qualifications, but also his ability to keep an open mind, his sensitivity to the concerns of all Americans and their right to equal protection under the laws; not only his intellectual capacity, but his judgment and wisdom; not only his achievements, but his fairness and his courage to stand up to the other branches of government when they infringe on the rights and liberties of our citizens.

I think that civil liberties types will make an argument that the lure of chat lines may be too much. And maybe that will not be a fair use of the limited rights granted police authorities to use entrapments.

It is preservative, I think, of all the other rights. Without access to the ballot box, people are not in the position to protect any other rights that are important to them. And so I think it's one of, as you said, the most precious rights we have as Americans.

If it's a situation in which the public is being given access, you can't discriminate against the media and say, as a general matter, that the media don't have access, because their access rights, of course, correspond with those of the public.

This body and legislative bodies in the states are protectors of the people's rights, ... Legislators have the right to protect the rights of the people as much as courts.

Oh. Well, the existing Voting Rights Act ? the constitutionality has been upheld. And I don't have any issue with that.

The bill of rights remains the same, and the obligation of the Court to protect those basic liberties in times of peace and in times of war and in times of stress and in times of calm, that doesn't change,

The notion that that was my view is totally inconsistent and rebutted by my life. I married a lawyer. I was raised with three sisters who work outside the home. I have a daughter for whom I will insist at every turn that she has equal citizenship rights with her brother.

the most precious rights we have as Americans.