Jed S. Rakoff Quotes & Sayings

“In baseball you have individual responsibility, and if you fail it, you get an error. But at the same time, your focus is on the common goal of the team to win. This is part of what resonates with people about baseball. This is how they would like society to work.”

“An application of judicial power that does not rest on facts is worse than mindless, it is inherently dangerous. If its deployment does not rest on facts - cold, hard, solid facts, established either by admissions or by trials - it serves no lawful or moral purpose and is simply an engine of oppression.”

“The price of being a nice guy is too high - much too high - in terms of the system of justice.”

“If you prosecute a CEO or other senior executive and send him or her to jail for committing a crime, the deterrent effect in my view vastly outweighs even the best compliance program you can put in place.”

“I don't have any respect for judges who arrive at the result first, and then try to figure out some way they can bend the law to reach their particular predilections.”

“If, in the name of combating terrorism, we so restrict our own freedom, have we not thereby lost part of the very battle we seek to win?”

“I think it's common sense to say that the longer away from a crime it gets prosecuted, the less deterrent effect there is.”

“I have huge respect for Preet Bharara, a great U.S. Attorney by any measure. But even great men can make mistakes.”

“Judges have to be neutral, but they don't have to be eunuchs.”

“I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.”