"The risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence."
"As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court."
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Source: Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 at 222, 1973.
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"A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government."
"The law is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the due process clause, the courts will be very busy indeed."
"The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.... There should be, therefore, great resistance to ... redefining the category of rights deemed to be fundamental. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily takes to itself further authority to govern the country without express constitutional authority."
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