Warren E. Burger quotes

Warren E. Burger was an influential American judge and served as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. His leadership shaped many significant legal decisions during the 1970s and 1980s. He played a pivotal role in modernizing the federal judiciary and promoting judicial reform. Here are 26 of his quotes:

We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians. (Warren E. Burger)
To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching. View quote
Warren E. Burger
The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily lives of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week. View quote
Warren E. Burger
History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality. View quote
Warren E. Burger
There can be no assumption that today's majority is "right" and the Amish and others like them are "wrong." A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different. View quote
Warren E. Burger
Judges rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times. View quote
Warren E. Burger
Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. View quote
Warren E. Burger
In my conception of it, the primary role of the Court is to decide cases. From the decision of cases, of course, some changes develop, but to try to create or substantially change civil or criminal procedure, for example, by judicial decision is the worst possible way to do it. The Supreme Court is simply not equipped to do that job properly. View quote
Warren E. Burger
The entire legal profession - lawyers, judges, law teachers - has become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers - healers of conflicts. Doctors, in spite of astronomical medical costs, still retain a high degree of public confidence, because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns? View quote
Warren E. Burger
No matter what coercive powers of enforcement governments may assert, the peoples in country after country in all ages have demonstrated that Man was meant to be free but that this ideal can be realized only under the rule of law. And this must be a rule that places restraints on individuals and on governments alike. This is a delicate, a fragile, balance to maintain. It is fragile because it is sustained only by an ideal that requires each person in society, by an exercise of free will, to accept and abide the restraints of a structure of laws. View quote
Warren E. Burger
For some disputes, trials will be the only means, but for many claims, trial by adversarial contest must go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood. Our trials are too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for a truly civilized people. (Warren E. Burger)
No one has ever suggested that tax exemption has converted libraries, art galleries, or hospitals into arms of the state or employees "on the public payroll." There is no genuine nexus between tax exemption and establishment of religion. View quote
Warren E. Burger
We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians. No other profession is as casual or heedless of reality as ours. View quote
Warren E. Burger
There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. View quote
Warren E. Burger
A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment. View quote
Warren E. Burger
Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life. View quote
Warren E. Burger
It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house. View quote
Warren E. Burger
The trial of a case is a three-legged stool - a judge and two advocates. View quote
Warren E. Burger
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America. View quote
Warren E. Burger
Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values. View quote
Warren E. Burger
Trials by the adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood. (Warren E. Burger)
If I were writing the Bill of Rights now there wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment.... This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. View quote
Warren E. Burger
It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to "discover" a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing. View quote
Warren E. Burger
However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises. View quote
Warren E. Burger
We may have lured judges into roaming at large in the constitutional field. View quote
Warren E. Burger