"The risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence."
"Respondent would have us announce a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do."
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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."
"When the whistle blows you have only a limited amount of time to do what you have to do. You either do it then or you don't do it at all."
"We're the only branch of government that explains itself in writing every time itmakes a decision."