David Souter: The Constitution is no simple contract, not because it u...

The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right.

David Souter

simple mind heart

It is much easier to modify an opinion if one has not already persuasively declared it.

David Souter

opinion politics political

Kofi Annan described World Summit on the Information Society as the first summit to deal primarily with an opportunity. The range of issues and potential opportunities that might be included in the Information Society is enormous. Compromise texts are very poor at addressing these in any meaningful way, and many governments see little point in trying.

David Souter

government opportunity meaningful

It is impossible, maybe undesirable, to take partisanship out of the political process.

David Souter

political process impossible

I don't think that developing countries gained from a two-stage process. A single phase summit (which is, after all, a two year process, not a three day event) would have built awareness, and would probably have led to more substantive conclusions at the end of the first summit meeting. Civil society may have gained a bit more from the networking experience, but it was less effective at networking in the second phase.

David Souter

country years thinking

Summits are best at dealing with problems, where the need for action is urgent and the range of possible actions limited. They are less good at dealing with opportunities.

David Souter

action opportunity needs

The concept of the "information society" is both vague and all-embracing. Different participants meant different things by it. In practice, though, World Summit on the Information Society only dealt with a small number of issues: ICTs and human rights (to some extent), ICTs and development (to some extent), infrastructure finance and Internet governance. Very large aspects of what might have been included in the "information society" were not really discussed.

David Souter

small-numbers issues rights

Summits [World Summit on the Information Society] are meant to help governments reach a global consensus on major issues which has proved elusive in established fora. They do so through the embarrassment associated with failing to sign a summit's final agreement.

David Souter

issues government agreement

The main drawback, of course, was cost. Participating effectively in World Summit on the Information Society was very expensive for both developing countries and (especially) civil society.

David Souter

cost country world

It does seem to me, though, that the countries that gained most from World Summit on the Information Society are those that saw it as an opportunity to engage in more diverse discussion about the issues internally and to seek to raise the quality of debate (both in terms of information and understanding).

David Souter

issues opportunity country

History provides an antidote to cynicism about the past.

David Souter

about cynicism history past

There is a danger to judicial independence when people have no understanding of how the judiciary fits into the constitutional scheme.

David Souter

how independence understanding people

Legislatures not driven to desperation by the problems of public education may be able to see the threat in vouchers negotiable in sectarian schools.

David Souter

problems see desperation education

When Congress exercises the powers delegated to it by the Constitution, it may impose affirmative obligations on executive and judicial officers of state and local governments as well as ordinary citizens.

David Souter

well judicial congress constitution

Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government had the power to issue commands to the several sovereign states, but it had no authority to govern individuals directly.

David Souter

national government authority power

Murder has foreseeable consequences. When it happens, it is always to distinct individuals, and after it happens, other victims are left behind.

David Souter

behind consequences always left

Meaning comes from the capacity to see what is not in some simple, objective sense there on the printed page.

David Souter

meaning some see simple

The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches.

David Souter

good constitution freedom law

The Constitution is a pantheon of values, and a lot of hard cases are hard because the Constitution gives no simple rule of decision for the cases in which one of the values is truly at odds with another.

David Souter

constitution hard decision simple

In a perfect world, I would never give another speech, address, talk, lecture or whatever as long as I live.

David Souter

live never long world

The Constitution is no simple contract, not because it uses a certain amount of open-ended language, but because its language grants and guarantees many good things, and good things that compete with each other and can never all be realized, altogether, all at once.