There were countless fugitive slaves, but only one - Dred Scott - had the patience to endure the vicissitudes of America's legal system. But it was all worth it when he made it to the highest court in the land and was told by the chief justice that he was a) wrong and b) not a man, but a piece of property.
His true reward, however, would come years later, after he was dead and it was of no use to him. For his case was a precedent, and today it is discussed by historians, memorized by high-school students, and joked about by assholes like myself.

She probably did not think of herself as a feminist, but she had the strong sense that her state’s law was unjust, and faith that the judiciary could redress her grievance. Ultimately, her faith was vindicated. The Supreme Court unanimously declared Idaho’s male preference statute unconstitutional, a plain denial to Sally Reed of the equal protection of the state’s law.

Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss

My claims were justified in all men's sight; I put my trust in equity and right; Yet, to my horror and the world's disgrace, Justice is mocked, and I have lost my case! A scoundrel whose dishonesty is notorious Emerges from another lie victorious!

Conviction is a good motive, but a bad judge.

Frontiero v. Richardson, decided a year and a half after the Court had begun to listen: “Traditionally, [differential treatment on the basis of sex] was rationalized by an attitude of ‘romantic paternalism’ which, in practical effect [often] put women, not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.

There is little reason to think that many members of the American public either understood or sympathized with the particular doctrines espoused by the majority of the Court in holding New Deal legislation unconstitutional, but the defeat of the Court-packing plan made it obvious that the public did not want even a very popular president to tamper with the Supreme Court of the United States. Whatever the shortcomings of its doctrine in the public mind, its judgments were not to be reversed by the simple expedient of creating new judgeships and filling them with administration supporters.

No doubt Agnew felt it helped his cause to get that little bit of fiction out there again in 1980. But he had made a critical error at a critical time. By writing about the conversation with White, Agnew had waived any attorney-client privilege that protected exchanges with his lawyer. And that mistake was a very big reason why Spiro Agnew, finally, would get some measure of comeuppance.

judgments. A mistake, therefore, of right may become a species

I made two mistakes and both of them are sitting on the Supreme Court. [Referring to Earl Warren and William Brennan]

Injustice in the end produces independence.

mercy to a criminal may be gross injustice to the community.