A Quote by John Marshall
Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.
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Though this motion for a new trial is an application to the discretion of the Court, it must be remembered that the discretion to be exercised on such an occasion is not a wild but a sound discretion, and to be confined within those limits within which an honest man, competent to discharge the duties of his office, ought to confine himself. And that discretion will be best exercised by not deviating from the rules laid down by our predecessors; for the practice of the Court forms the law of the Court.
As Alexander Hamilton said in 'The Federalist Papers,' law is about the exercise of judgment and not will. Judicial activism is best understood as substituting judicial opinion for the command of law. The law is not an infinitely malleable tool.
Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.
Much of the Constitution is remarkably simple and straightforward - certainly as compared to the convoluted reasoning of judges and law professors discussing what is called 'Constitutional law,' much of which has no basis in that document....The real question [for judicial nominees] is whether that nominee will follow the law or succumb to the lure of 'a living constitution,' 'evolving standards' and other lofty words meaning judicial power to reshape the law to suit their own personal preferences.
It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
The Supreme Court, or any court, when they make a decision, if that's a published
decision, it becomes virtually like a statute. Everybody is suppose to follow that law. Whether I decide to allow a law to become a law without my signature is simply
in effect expressing a view that while I don't particularly care for this, the Legislature passed it, it was an overwhelming.
vote, or maybe there were other reasons. But
my decision not to sign doesn't have to be followed by
everybody from that point on
Man must know the principle of Creation: giving between each interchanging opposite half of each cycle for the purpose of repeating its giving. This is universal law and each individual must manifest this law. Man will forever war with man until he learns to give his all with the full expectation of equal receiving, and never taking that which is not given as an earned reward for his giving.
Your memo is trumping a Congressional statute. You don't have the discretion on whether to follow the law or not.
Discretion, like the hole in a doughnut, does not exist except as an area left open by a surrounding belt of restriction. It is therefore a relative concept. It always makes sense to ask, "Discretion under which standards?" or "Discretion as to which authority?
And this vague little smile is my all purpose expression the meaning of which I will leave to your discretion.
In the 'in-itself' there is nothing of 'causal connections', of 'necessity', or of 'psychological non-freedom'; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule or 'law'. It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed 'in itself', we act once more as we have always acted- mythologically.
Recognizing that the power of will is the supreme court over all other departments of my mind, I will exercise daily when I need the urge to act for any purpose; and I will form habits designed to bring the power of my will into action at least once daily.
God created the law of free will, and God created the law of cause and effect. And he himself will not violate the law. We need to be thinking less in terms of what God did and more in terms of whether or not we are following those laws.
The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty.
The Supreme Court is about the Constitution. It is about constitutionality. It is about the law. At its bear simplest, it's about the law. It is not about the Democrat Party agenda. Because that's what it's become. The whole judiciary has become that because that's the kind of people they have put on various courts as judges, and every liberal justice on the Supreme Court is a social justice warrior first and a judge of the law second. And if they get one more, then they will have effectively corrupted the Supreme Court.
Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?
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