Most Supreme Court opinions are not written to be quoted. They are written to be correct, and they read that way. Now and then a justice puts a sentence down that is short enough to remember and plain enough to carry past the case it came from. This post collects eight of them. I checked each against the text of the opinion it came from, and the wording below is the Court's, not the version that circulates.
"It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."
William Marbury and others had been appointed justices of the peace in the District of Columbia, and they asked the Court to order Secretary of State James Madison to deliver their commissions. In Marbury v. Madison (1803) Chief Justice Marshall used the sentence above to explain why a court has to decide when two laws conflict. The next lines are the argument: those who apply the rule to a case must expound and interpret it.
"We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."
Chief Justice Warren wrote the opinion in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which combined cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware. The sentence is followed immediately by the one that makes it a holding: "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
"The freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, married in the District of Columbia and returned to Caroline County, Virginia. They pleaded guilty to violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages and were sentenced to one year in jail. The judge suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that they leave the state. In Loving v. Virginia (1967) Chief Justice Warren wrote for the Court, and the sentence above is the one that stays with the case. An earlier version of this post had the sentence worded differently. This is the opinion's wording.
"It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
Three public school pupils in Des Moines, Iowa, were suspended for wearing black armbands to protest the government's policy in Vietnam. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) Justice Fortas wrote for the Court that wearing the armbands was closely akin to "pure speech." The sentence above begins the Court's treatment of the earlier cases that support the point.
"They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone."
The majority in Olmstead v. United States (1928) allowed evidence gathered by tapping telephone wires. Justice Brandeis dissented. He wrote that the makers of the Constitution "sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations," and that they "conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." It was a dissent, and it lost. It is the part of the case that people quote.
"The position of the Negro today in America is the tragic but inevitable consequence of centuries of unequal treatment."
The Court in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) produced no single majority opinion, and Justice Marshall filed a separate one. He wrote: "Measured by any benchmark of comfort or achievement, meaningful equality remains a distant dream for the Negro." The word he used is the word of 1978. The argument is the history that came before it, set out in numbers.
"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."
During the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Gregory Lee Johnson took part in a political demonstration, and after a march through the city he burned an American flag. In Texas v. Johnson (1989) Justice Brennan wrote the sentence above for the Court, and the conviction fell. The opinion adds that this holds "even where our flag is involved."
"Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."
The majority in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) held the coverage formula of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Justice Ginsburg dissented, joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. The umbrella line is one image doing the work of a page of statistics: a law that works can look unnecessary precisely because it works.
What these have in common
Five of the eight are from opinions of the Court, and three are from separate opinions or dissents. Each one states a rule in the language of a person who has to live under it: a student, a couple, someone on the telephone. That is why they travel. A holding says what a court decided. A good sentence tells you why the decision matters.
Sources
- Marbury v. Madison (1803), Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Loving v. Virginia (1967), Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)
- Olmstead v. United States (1928), Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), Texas v. Johnson (1989), Shelby County v. Holder (2013)
Updated October 2026.
This post was rewritten with AI (Claude) and reviewed by an editor before publication.
