Stephen Breyer Judge Quotations

I think it shows that if you have one group of people doing it, you'll get another group of people doing it.

Well it's fairly important that everyone have a lawyer and so we have a system that you can't convict a person without a lawyer, even if he's guilty.

We developed a system of protecting human liberty such that judges and independent judges are a necessary part of that protection.

Would I want to be judged by whether or not I was popular? Wouldn't I want to be judged on what was true as opposed to what might be popular?

Ultimately, the question of campaign contributions will be decided by the public.

Well, just that there would be somebody in the office and the voters - it was more or less an understanding in the entire community, as long as that person was doing a good job on the merits, nobody was going to run against him.

Once you're in a system where there are contributions being made, it's certainly not the case that everybody expects something back.

I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less.

At the same time, we do live in a democracy. And for that reason I think it is appropriate to have some element of public control.

And in that confirmation process, I sat for 17 hours in front of a senate judiciary committee.

And if a judge is going to be criticized for letting off a person and it turns out that person was innocent, that would be a pretty bad criticism.