Hugo Black

“ With a 'shock the conscience' test of Constitutionality, citizens must guess what is the law, guess what a majority of nine judges will believe fair and reasonable. Such a test wilfully throws away the certainty and security that lies in a written constitution, one that does not alter with a judge's health, belief, or his politics. I believe the only way to steer this country towards its great destiny is to follow what our Constitution says, not what judges think it should have said. ”

“ The rules set out in the Constitution itself provide what is governmentally fair and what is not. Neither due process nor equal protection permits state laws to be invalidated on any such nonconstitutional standard as a judge's personal view of fairness. The people and their elected representatives, not judges, are constitutionally vested with the power to amend the Constitution. Judges should not usurp that power in order to put over their own views. ”

“ I do not believe the wise men who sought to draw a written constitution to protect the people from governmental harassment and oppression, who feared alike the king and the king's judges, would have used any such words or phrases. Such unbounded authority in any group of politically apointed or elected judges would unquestionably be sufficient to classify our Nation as a government of men, not the government of laws of which we boast. ”