Perspectives: Law Day: Notable Supreme Court quotes

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This Friday, May 1, is Law Day, the denouement of what is referred to in some quarters as Law Month in April. It will be celebrated in Minneapolis with an event at the Fountain Plaza at the Hennepin County Government Center (300 S. Sixth St.) co-sponsored by the Minnesota, Hennepin and Ramsey County Bar Associations. The event, scheduled for 2 p.m., is titled “The Rule of Law and the American Dream,” with a follow-up reception at the Capella Tower Atrium generously sponsored by the Ciresi Conlin law firm and other contributing organizations. Other celebrations will occur elsewhere in places like the Anoka County Courthouse.

The commemoration dates back to 1957 when it was suggested by Charles Rhyne, president of the American Bar Association, as a counterweight to the traditional May 1 celebrations in some authoritarian and Communist countries, and was the subject of a proclamation the following year by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, then given official imprimatur by a congressional resolution in 1961.

The recognition of the “Rule of Law” this Friday provides an opportune occasion to recall some of the most evocative phrases uttered by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here is a compilation of a few of them derived from a variety of opinions, and ideological perspectives, both majority and dissenting ones, covering a wide span of cases, including from Minnesota.

This is not an exhaustive list, but simply one version of some of the most notable wordsmithing of the high court justices that resonate loudly in the here and now.

“Nothing gives an Author so great pleasure as to find his work respectfully quoted by other learned authors.”
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac Improved (1757)

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“It is a pleasure to be able to quote lines to fit any occasion.”
Abraham Lincoln quoted in Collected Words of Abraham Lincon (1994)

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“Einstein … when he wasn’t busy figuring out the universe, he sure could crack out quotes for a refrigerator magnet.”
Award-winning television screenwriter Jeffrey P. King, (1983 – ___)

Early expressions

There’s no better place to start than with a pair of monumental rulings of the Supreme Court in its early years, which shaped the country for better or worse.

Establishing the principle of judicial review in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), legendary Chief Justice John Marshall declared: ”It is empathetically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

The issue of slavery that divided the states developed in the first part of the 19th century was addressed in the famous Dred Scott case, Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), written by another chief justice, slaveholder Roger Taney. It was one of the ignitors of the Civil War, holding that slavery could not be barred in newly developing territories and states because enslaved Black people were chattels that had “no rights which the White man was bound to respect.”

Holmes & Hughes

Two great figures on the Supreme Court in the first part of the 20th century propounded catch phrases, one in landmark Minnesota litigation.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a long time liberal high court jurist was not so lenient in his view upholding a Virginia statute in Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) that allowed forced sterilization of individuals deemed “feeble minded” or “unfit” due to their parentage ostensibly to prevent hereditary defects. It was constitutionally permissible, according to the Lion of the Land, because ”Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes was a colleague of Holmes on the bench during the first time that Hughes was there before resigning and running for president and narrowly losing in 1916 to incumbent Woodrow Wilson by late arriving ballots brought by horseback from remote areas of California arriving after election day.

In the landmark case from Minnesota of Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), the court reversed two Minnesota court rulings upholding the shuttering of an offensive newspaper in Hennepin County. Hughes wrote for the 5-4 court, joined by Holmes, and Justice Pierce Butler of Minnesota wrote the dissent. The chief justice highlighted the doctrine against “prior restraint” which he described as “previous restraint.” Hughes explained that although “liberty of press may be abused … a more serious offense would result if authorities could determine which stories can be published.”

During World War II, in overruling a decision three years earlier, the court in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 349 U.S. 624 (1943), held that public school children cannot be compelled to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance if doing so offends their religious beliefs. The decision was grounded on the precept that “a fixed star in our constellation is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”

Brown battling

Reversals by the Supreme Court justices after World War II ring true today.

One of the most notable is in a concurring opinion written by Justice Robert Jackson in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443 (1953). Back on the court after a stint as chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg post-World War II Nazi war crime trials, Jackson pointed out in his concurrence in the reversal of a conviction marred by racial bias that “we are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.”

Another battle invoking the rights of Black people occurred in the seminal civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), overturning the “separate but equal” tenet in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), banning racial segregation in public schools and heralding the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-1960s. 

The landmark ruling was authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren, an appointee of Eisenhower, who later said his appointment was one of his “two mistakes, and they are both sitting on the Supreme Court.” Striking down racial segregation, the chief justice explained that “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place on the field of public education … [because] separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Right rulings

The extension of constitutional rights by the high court in the 1960s, a real constitutional revolution, yielded several noteworthy snippets, including this trio.

In 1962, Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), reducing the disproportionate power of legislators from rural areas under the “one person, one vote” principle, Chief Justice Warren explained that “Legislators represent people, not trees, or acres. They are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic instruments.”

In a unanimous ruling in that same term, the court in New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) granted major First Amendment rights in defamation cases in a decision written by Justice William Brennan, the other one of Ike’s self-proclaimed “mistakes.”

He wrote that First Amendment protection is warranted for much defamation because of “the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open.”

A less elevating but nonetheless important case decided by the court under the First Amendment was Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U. S. 341 (1964) in which the court struck down an obscenity conviction, recognizing the subjectivity of the determination of what constitute impermissible pornography. Justice Potter Stewart, in concurrence, expressed the difficulty in articulating an objective definition of impermissibility. Given the futility of defining it, he was left with “I know it when I see it.”

Constitutional rights of students were advanced in Tinker v. Des Moines Community Independent School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), in which the justices overturned sanctions against public school students wearing black arm bands in nondisruptive protests of the Vietnam War. Justice Abe Fortas, shortly before being forced to resign due to an improper relationship with a shady character, wrote, “Neither students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Discrimination decisions

The court under Chief Justice John Roberts has uttered evocative phrases in decisions involving discrimination.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in a case diluting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), the majority, in an opinion written by Roberts, stated that Black Americans had achieved parity in voting status. Ginsburg objected that diminishing enforcement of the law because it has been statistically effective in increasing Black voter participation is like “throwing away your umbrella in a downpour because you are not getting wet.”

Roberts has twice used alliteration opinions against “reverse” discrimination giving preferential treatment to Black people. In a plurality opinion in a school enrollment case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Sch. District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007) and then with more impact in the reversal of lower court rulings barring affirmative action in college admissions programs in Students for Fair Admission v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), he justified the rulings because “the way to stop discrimination on the bases of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

A dissenting opinion by Justice Antonio Scalia used a different view to express his extreme derision in objecting to the Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), barring state laws preventing “same-sex” marriage. One of the four dissenters in the 5-4 ruling, he lamented that if he had ever joined the florid views in the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy: “I would hide my head in a bag.”

Round-off ruling

To round off the dozen, with a Baker’s 13th, Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz of the Minnesota Supreme Court engaged in evocative wordsmithing in recognizing a common law right of privacy in Minnesota like nearly every other state in Lake v. Wal-Mart Stores, 582 N.W.2d 231 (Minn. 1998), touted as one of the “Top Ten Cases of the Millenium” in this space more than 25 years ago.

She explained that the state should be a latecomer in acknowledging that right because “the right to privacy is an integral part of our humanity … [and] the heart of our liberty is choosing which parts of our lives shall become public and which parts we shall hold close.”

These various remarks reflect that, whether favorable or not, words promulgated by the highest courts are revelatory of the different viewpoints regarding the “American Dream.”

But there’s one view that seems to remain constant, as Chief Justice Roberts responded to a contention by the Trump administration in Trump v. Barbara, No. 25-365, that the concept of “birthright citizenship” embedded in the 14th Amendment should be reined-in because of changing circumstances since it was added to the Constitution nearly 160 years ago: “It’s a new world; it’s the same Constitution,” as the chief reminded at oral argument on April 1.

No fooling.

ENJOY LAW DAY FRIDAY!

RELATED: More Perspectives columns

PERSPECTIVE POINTERS

Some Supreme Court Tidbits

Longest Supreme Court historical ruling: Dred Scott, 200+ pages.

Longest recent one: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2022) overruling Roe v. Wade (1973).

Shortest ruling: U.S. v. Banker (1817), six words, “The United States never pays costs.”

Longest litigation: Ex Parte Gaines (1839-1891), probate battle, 17 Supreme Court proceedings.

Longest oral arguments: McCulloch v. Maryland, (1819), nine days; Gibbons v. Ogden, (1829), 20 hours.

Longest serving justice: William O. Douglas, 36 years, seven months and eight days.

Longest current serving justice: Clarence Thomas, 34 years, 172 days.

Shortest tenure: John Rutledge, one year, 18 days as associate justice; four months, 16 days as chief justice.

Marshall H. Tanick is an attorney with the Twin Cities law firm of Meyer, Njus, Tanick, Linder & Robbins, PA.