A Quote by Sonia Sotomayor

It is our responsibility to explain to the public how an often unpredictable system of justice is one that serves a productive, civilized, but always evolving, society.

Sonia Sotomayor

Quote Topics

Always Civilized Evolving Explain How Justice Often Our Productive Public Responsibility Society System Unpredictable

Quote Author

Sonia Sotomayor
American - Judge
Born: June 25, 1954

Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become.

D. Todd Christofferson

Besides taking jobs from American workers, illegal immigration creates huge economic burdens on our health care system, our education system, our criminal justice system, our environment, our infrastructure and our public safety.

Jan C. Ting

Because we always are feeling for justice for all that the reality is, unfortunately, the justice system is skewed, and often people of color do not receive appropriate justice in this country.

Martin Luther King III

I feel it's our responsibility to keep our ear tuned to public discourse. There's a lot of noise out there, and our responsibility is to pick up on the themes and issues that work their way through all of society.

Nina Tassler

We have two boys. After George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, we had to explain to our older son, who was 12 at the time, how that could happen. Instead of hugging and consoling him, my husband pulled out a documentary about Emmett Till and showed it to him and started to talk about how the justice system works in this country - and how it often doesn't. From that conversation, our son wrote a short story about Trayvon Martin going to heaven to meet Emmett Till.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

Justice Lewis Powell spoke for all of us when he said: Equal justice under law is perhaps the most inspiring idea of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists.

Edward Kennedy

People who face discrimination due to the color of their skin, are often obstructed by institutional barriers across our society - from education and housing, to employment and healthcare, to voting rights and the criminal justice system.

Wayne Messam

The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society.

John Paul Stevens

If religious freedom is to endure in America, the responsibility for teaching religion to public school children must be left to the homes and churches of our land, where this responsibility rightfully belongs. It must not be assumed by the government through the agency of the public school system.

Sam Ervin

A dreaded society is not a civilized society. The most progressive and powerful society in the civilized sense, is a society which has recognized its ethos, and come to terms with the past and the present, with religion and science. With modernism and mysticism, with materialism and spirituality; a society free of tension, a society rich in culture. Such a society cannot come with hocus-pocus formulas and with fraud. It has to flow from the depth of a divine search.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

I therefore believe that our system does not have a word for failed trial, and that is where the American public does not realize that our criminal justice system sometimes makes mistakes.

Sam Sheppard

It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public's group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service. The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to know how to please the public, but to know how to sway the public. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

Edward Bernays

Unfortunately, race still determines too much, often determines where people live, determines what kind of education in their public schools they can get, and, yes, it determines how they're treated in the criminal justice system.

Hillary Clinton

The American people do not want people thumbing their nose at the law. It undercuts the very fabric of our society and the system of civil justice and of criminal justice as well.

Ernest Istook

Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building, it is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists...it is fundamental that justice should be the same, in substance and availability, without regard to economic status.