Quotessence
Home / Authors / Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter

Felix Frankfurter Quotes

Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Filter quotes by topic

AllLawMenMayLibertyFreedomIfsStatesConstitutionCourtEndsExpressionJudicialMindDemocraticFirstsGovernmentJudgingJusticeLawyerMean

Famous Felix Frankfurter Quotes

“If one starts with the assumption that, in the absence of specific Congressional authority, a fixed rule of law precludes contracting officers from providing in a Government contract terms reasonably calculated to assure its performance even though there be no money loss through a particular default, there is no problem. But answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question, and thereby begging the real one.”

IfsRealProblemGovernmentLawTermLossAnswersParticularAuthorityPerformancesAbsenceFixedAssumptionContractsOfficersProvidingNo ProblemBeggingRule Of LawNo MoneyDefaultReal OnesContracting
Author:Felix Frankfurter
Create image

“Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial, and not an inquisitorial, system - a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured, and may not, by coercion, prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.”

MayStatesLawUsedPrinciplesProductsProveMouthsEvidenceMethodGuiltFollowingConvictionCriminalsPsychologicalBeing TrueConfessionEnforcementAccusedUnlikelyCoercionProve ItAdmissionSecuredInvoluntaryCriminal Law
Author:Felix Frankfurter
Create image

“A license cannot be revoked because a man is red-headed or because he was divorced, except for a calling, if such there be, for which red-headedness or an unbroken marriage may have some rational bearing. If a State licensing agency lays bare its arbitrary action, or if the State law explicitly allows it to act arbitrarily, that is precisely the kind of State action which the Due Process Clause forbids.”

IfsMenKindMayStatesActionLawProcessCallingLaysDuesRationalAgencyLicenseArbitraryDivorcedUnbrokenClausesDue ProcessLicensing
Author:Felix Frankfurter
Create image

“What becomes decisive to a Justice's functioning on the Court in the large area within which his individuality moves is his general attitude toward law, the habits of the mind that he has formed or is capable of unforming, his capacity for detachment, his temperament or training for putting his passion behind his judgment instead of in front of it. The attitudes and qualities which I am groping to characterize are ingredients of what compendiously might be called dominating humility.”

MindMightMovingLawPassionJusticeBehindsAttitudeQualityFrontsHumilityHabitJudgmentCapableTrainingAreasCapacityCourtIndividualityIngredientsTemperamentDetachmentDominating
Book:Felix Frankfurter on the Supreme Court: extrajudicial essays on the Court and the Constitution
Create image

“Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not interfere with organized or individual expressions of belief or disbelief. Propagation of belief - or even of disbelief - in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meeting-house.”

MenMayGovernmentLawUniverseHouseIndividualBeliefChurchMysteryExpressionUltimateRelationMeetingsConvictionPursuitOrganizedProtectedInterfereDisbeliefAffirmativeMosquesChapelSynagoguePropagationIndividual Expression
Author:Felix Frankfurter
Create image