Sam Brownback Quotes

In recent years, even as the court has become an increasingly political body, the Senate is not focused on preserving any perceived ideological balance when Democrat presidents have appointed people to the court.

We must take proactive steps to promote democracy and human rights abroad.

I enjoyed working with Ted Kennedy.

Let's create a legal system that can work.

We must do everything we can to be more aggressive in confronting Syria about what they are doing in Iraq.

[Jane] Roe has made it not only possible, but has found it constitutional to kill a whole class of people, simply because of their genetic make-up.

I'm a Ronald Reagan conservative. I'm an economic conservative, I'm strong military. But I also voice and speak and work hard on the social issues.

To kill [children in the womb] makes us all the poorer, insensitive, calloused and jaded.

Most Americans want judges who will stick to interpreting the law rather than making it.

It may seem ironic that the judicial branch preserves its legitimacy through refraining from action on political questions. That concept was put forward best by Justice [Felix] Frankfurter, appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Among the most famous of these Supreme Court cases of exercise of political power I believe are the cases of Roe V. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, two 1973 cases based on false statements which created a constitutional right to abortion.

I do a number of things working on human rights issues, prison recidivism rates, and then I also push and have worked a lot on the social issues of rebuilding the family.

[Felix Frankfurter] said courts are not representative bodies. They're not designed to be a good reflex of a democratic society. Their judgment is best informed and, therefore, most dependable within narrow limits.

I do think there's a lot more we can do on the life agenda.

I believe you [Samuel Alito] and others would look and say that the role of the courts is limited and it's not to decide political matters.

You can look at founding father Alexander Hamilton nevertheless assuring - assuring - the countrymen in Federalist 78 that the role of the federal courts under the proposed Constitution would be limited.

Seats on the [Court] bench are not reserved for causes or interests. They're given to those who will uphold the rule of law so long as the nominee is well-qualified to interpret and apply the law.

And you can claim whatever you want to of being pro-life or pro- choice, but the right to a abortion is not in the Constitution. The court created it. It created a constitutional right. And these decisions removed a fully appropriate political judgment from the people of the several states and has led to many adverse consequences.

Narrow scope of judicial power was the reason that people accepted the idea that the federal courts could have the power of judicial review; that is, the ability to decide whether a challenged law comports with the Constitution.

As I noted to my colleagues in the Roberts' hearings, in a year between 80 percent to 90 percent of the children in America diagnosed with Down's Syndrome will be killed in the womb simply because they have a positive genetic test which can be wrong, and is often wrong, but they would have a positive genetic test for Down's Syndrome and they will be killed.America is poorer because of such a policy.

The Supreme Court has also issued and never reversed a number of decisions that are repugnant to the Constitution's vision of human dignity and equality.

Unborn children can experience pain even more so than adults as the baby has more pain receptors per square inch than at any other time in its life.

I went to a number of foreign countries, and during whenever I went, I would try to go to an orphanage or a home for children. And I was seeing thousands of kids around the world that needed homes.

I believe, assume the power to decide more political than legal issues in nature, the people naturally focus less on the law and more on the lawyers that are chosen really to administer the law.

History has shown that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did, in fact, dramatically change the balance of the court in many critical areas, such as abortion, the privacy debate expansion and child pornography.

As we consider the fast pace of scientific and technological progress in our modern world, we must not lose our moral compass and give way to 'free market eugenics'.

I'd pull my little brother on our motorcycle on an inner tube behind it. We would go fishing, we would hunt some, growing up.

Everybody will say that they're not opposed to immigration; they're opposed to illegal immigration. That's what I'm saying.

I always think that the party that offers the most hope and ideas for the future is the party that wins.

I think we just need to stick to our knitting on the topics and the subjects the American people care about.

I stated at Justice [John] Roberts' hearing, the court's injected itself into many of the political debates of our day.

The people believed that while the courts would be independent, they would defer to the political branches on policy issues.

The court's injected itself in the definition of marriage, deciding whether or not human life is worth protecting, permitting government to transfer private property from one person to another, even interpreting the Constitution on the basis of foreign and international laws.

I want to note that, historically, the make-up of the court has changed just as elected branches have change.

What I find is most people have a civics book understanding for how Congress works and how a bill moves.

At my core, what I think we need to do is to get the basics right again. We need to rebuild our family structure, stay away from redefining marriage, and stand by marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

It is time for the government of China to stop holding innocent religious figures in captivity merely for peacefully protesting China's occupation of Tibet.

I believe in the sanctity of marriage.

My dad farmed, my granddad was a farmer. I wanted to be a farmer.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg came in front of the Senate and was approved 96-3 to be on the Supreme Court to replace conservative justice Byron White. This is in 1993.Now, Justice Ginsburg, it was noted earlier, was a general counsel for the ACLU, certainly a liberal group. It was abundantly clear during the confirmation hearing that Ginsburg would swing the balance of the court to the left.But because President [Bill] Clinton won the election and because Justice Ginsburg clearly had the intellectual ability and integrity to serve on the court, she was confirmed.

The next president needs to know foreign policy and not learn it on the job.

We are at our best when we help the weakest. The weak make us strong.

Everybody has values. Now, you know it may be formed in a secular setting, it may be formed in an intellectual setting, but everybody comes forward with values.