[Court] is an institution that depends on making tough decisions in close cases for reasons that it explains well and that, in the past at least, have proven satisfactory to the public.

The purpose prong of the Lemon test requires that a government activity have a secular purpose. That requirement is not satisfied, however, by the mere existence of some secular purpose, however dominated by religious purposes... The proper inquiry under the purpose prong of Lemon, I submit, is whether the government intends to convey a message of endorsement or disapproval of religion.

[Court] is an institution that depends on making tough decisions in close cases for reasons that it explains well and that, in the past at least, have proven satisfactory to the public.

If you take a position under the Constitution that is against the majority view, you have to explain it well enough that maybe you can persuade some of that majority to agree with you.

I'm a judge. It seemed to me that it was critical to try to take action to stem the criticism and help people understand that in the constitutional framework, it's terribly important not to have a system of retaliation against decisions people don't like.

Historically, it took a long time before the court took any women law clerks. Finally, it did, but the numbers have never matched very effectively the percentages of law graduates out of graduating classes. We have far more than we ever did before and it's continued to grow, but it isn't a nice match yet.

The fact is that knowledge about the Constitution and the Court is not something that is handed down through the gene pool; every generation has to learn it. And I'm not sure the recent generations have done that good a job of learning about it.