Political Quotes

“It is my honor to be recognized by you to address you here on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. I came to this floor this evening to take up a topic that I think is essential to the future of our country for our moral foundation. Yet, as I have listened to the gentleman from Maryland's presentation, there are a few moments I would like to spend with the other perspective before I move into the topic I came to address. I go back as far as the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), who used the reference and said that stare decisis is binding precedent. Well, Mr. Speaker, I want the American people to know that stare decisis is a Latin term, a legal term that means, once the case is decided, it deserves deference. It has already been decided; it deserves deference, but where it has never been a binding precedent. There have been a number of times that the Supreme Court has turned 180 degrees on what the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) has called a binding precedent. I could go through a list of those, Mr. Speaker. I think it is important to note that accepting a decision of a previous Supreme Court as if somehow it were binding precedent and then settled law and then incorporate it into the Constitution itself would be a very erroneous concept to carry into the Supreme Court itself, because we have to go back and evaluate that these were mortals that made the decision in the Supreme Court and the other courts and they aren't always right.…”