Jeffrey Toobin · 384 pages
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“The result always mattered more than the rhetoric.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“He did what good lawyers always do. He shifted his argument in the direction his audience was already going.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“Toughened or coarsened by their worldly lives, the other dissenters could shrug and move on, but Souter couldn't. His whole life was being a judge.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“He denounced self-pity and pitied himself.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“Rehnquist was just reflecting his shifting role, from outsider to the institutional embodiment of the Court.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“There were two kinds of cases before the Supreme Court. There were abortion cases—and there were all the others.
Abortion was (and is) the central legal issue before the Court. It defined the judicial philosophies of the justices. It dominated the nomination and confirmation process. It nearly delineated the difference between the national Democratic and Republican parties.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“Purple prose attracts attention more than converts.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“He saw the Constitution as the vehicle to keep ecumenical passions in check.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“The dilemma facing Bush and the Republicans was clear. If Marshall left, they could not leave the Supreme Court an all-white institution; at the same time, they had to choose a nominee who would stay true to the conservative cause. The list of plausible candidates who fit both qualifications pretty much began and ended with Clarence Thomas.
… There was awkwardness about the selection from the start. "The fact that he is black and a minority has nothing to do with this," Bush said. "He is the best qualified at this time." The statement was self-evidently preposterous; Thomas had served as a judge for only a year and, before that, displayed few of the customary signs of professional distinction that are the rule for future justices. For example, he had never argued a single case in any federal appeals court, much less in the Supreme Court; he had never written a book, an article, or even a legal brief of any consequence. Worse, Bush's endorsement raised themes that would haunt not only Thomas's confirmation hearings but also his tenure as a justice. Like the contemporary Republican Party as a whole, Bush and Thomas opposed preferential treatment on account of race—and Bush had chosen Thomas in large part because of his race. The contradiction rankled.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“But it’s up to us …’ he said softly. ‘It’s up to us not to lose this”
― Rainbow Rowell, quote from Eleanor & Park
“I looked at sky this morning and realized summer is almost gone which really made me sad because it doesn't seem as though its been here at all.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.'
'They kill themselves, you mean?' said Bod. [...]
'Indeed.'
'Does it work? Are they happier dead?'
'Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from The Graveyard Book
“There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Mansfield Park
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn.”
― Natalie Babbitt, quote from Tuck Everlasting
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