Quote

If you can turn off certain categories of law, do you not also have the power to turn off all categories of law?

Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It's how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.

The Constitution overrides a statute, but a statute, if consistent with the Constitution, overrides the law of judges. In this sense, judge-made law is secondary and subordinate to the law that is made by legislators.

One cannot tell the High Court what to adjudicate. They must judge, and then the legislature must act accordingly.

Judges should interpret the law, not make it.

To make a division of power effectual, a veto in one form or another is indispensable. The right of each to judge for itself of the extent of the power allotted to its share, and to protect itself in its exercise, is what, in reality, is meant by a division of power.

Judges should be in the business of declaring what the law is using the traditional tools of interpretation, rather than pronouncing the law as they might wish it to be in light of their own political views.

Judges should interpret the laws according to what they say, not according to what the judges wish they would say. Judges are supposed to interpret the laws; they are not supposed to make them.

People must be confident that a judge's decisions are determined by the law and only the law. He must be faithful to the Constitution and statutes passed by Congress. Fidelity to the Constitution and the law has been the cornerstone of my life and the hallmark of the kind of judge I have tried to be.