Neal Katyal Quotes

Trump abuses every privilege in the same way. It’s kind of like King George. Take a legal concept and then stretch it beyond all recognition, and that’s what you have Trump doing.

I like doing scholarship for its own sake.

The special counsel regulations were written to provide the public with confidence that justice was done.

No one wants a president to be guilty of obstruction of justice. The only thing worse than that is a guilty president who goes without punishment.

I have no doubt that if confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would help to restore confidence in the rule of law. His years on the bench reveal a commitment to judicial independence – a record that should give the American people confidence that he will not compromise principle to favor the president who appointed him.

People tend to take more risks in groups than alone. For these reasons, the law has always treated conspiracy harshly.

Unanimity is important because it signals that the justices can rise above their differences and interpret the law without partisanship.

At times, President Trump has behaved far worse than Nixon did.

In some cases, Justice Department leaders can supervise investigations despite having personal knowledge about the entities involved.

I used to walk down the Justice Department on the fifth floor and see all those portraits of legendary attorneys general, Griffin Bell and Robert Jackson and people like that. Bill Barr will not be like that.

Every time a president invokes executive privilege, there are three relevant audiences he has to think about: the courts, Congress, and the public.

Obstruction of justice requires a corrupt intent.

Trump knows he’s facing some pretty strong criminal liability when he leaves office, one way or another. Even if a sitting president can’t be indicted, he’s got to know his future looks like it’s behind bars unless he cuts some sort of deal with the prosecutors.

If I got my hands on the Mueller report, the thing I’d want to see is what are the reasons why Barr made the conclusion about obstruction of justice that he did? Was it because of the facts? If so, why didn’t he try and interview Trump to learn all the facts?

The nice thing about the ‘House of Cards’ is they did 70 takes, so it was a little different. You only get one at the Supreme Court.

In our Constitution, our bedrock principle, you know – indeed, what the nation was founded on – is an idea of freedom of religion: that we don’t single out people because of their religion.

President Clinton invoked executive power a bunch of times… I think once he started doing that, the courts really pushed back on him. He couldn’t use it for things that actually had a better basis. He used it for things that were personal, like the Lewinsky investigation, trying to block his aides from testifying.

Justice Scalia was usually particularly challenging to me at oral argument, but I so respected his intellect and commitment to the pursuit of truth.

Barr has thrown himself in with Trump in ways unbecoming to the nation’s highest legal official. His conduct in trying to clear Trump is of a piece with his baseless attacks on ‘spying’ by the FBI and his defiance of Congress’s subpoenas.

Americans can tolerate some secrecy, particularly when it is rooted in protection of the public’s interests. But when the claims appear to hide wrongdoing, they begin to curdle.

Our founders recognized that ‘men were not angels’ and that checks and balances in government were critical to avoid threats to the rule of law.

The Supreme Court is very capable of acting quickly when it needs to.

Sometimes momentous government action leaves everyone uncertain about the next move.

One thing we know about government after the New Deal is that checks and balances through whistle-blowing is terrible policy.

The joy of great fiction is that it transports the reader to another world, where new characters live in otherwise unimaginable ways. It is one of the most powerful ways of generating empathy that I know.

I’m blessed with the fact that I don’t need a tremendous amount of sleep.

Everything having to do with President Trump and Russia, whether it is Mr. Trump’s demand for an investigation into the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller, or whether Mr. Trump will testify, requires an answer to one essential background question: Can Mr. Mueller seek to indict the president?

Firing the prosecutor who’s about to get you or your campaign is kind of quintessential obstruction of justice.

One of our Constitution’s greatest virtues is that it looks to judges as a source of reasoned, practical, rights-minded decision making.

I generally sleep about four hours.

There is no doubt that dissents can serve a useful role by explaining when a justice thinks the majority has gone off the deep end. But unanimity also sends its own powerful message – one that might be eclipsed in the headlines by a sensational dissent but could ultimately have a greater impact.

The public has every right to see Robert S. Mueller III’s conclusions. Absolutely nothing in the law or the regulations prevents the report from becoming public. Indeed, the relevant sources of law give Attorney General P. William Barr all the latitude in the world to make it public.

The Mueller report is a long subtweet of the Barr memo and demolishes it and says that is absolutely wrong, and fundamentally, in this country, whether you are a high person or a low official, anyone can obstruct justice.

I don’t think that the Supreme Court really takes cases with kind of a theme in mind. They get about 10,000 requests a year, and what are called ‘petitions for certiorari,’ which are essentially 30 page documents which say, ‘Hey, Court, hear my case.’ And they don’t take very many of them.

My wife is a doctor at a veteran’s hospital.

I think there is a role for courts in a variety of areas, but the notion that we can allow a federal judge to run our greenhouse gas policy strikes me as preposterous.

I said that my parents had come from India. They thought America was a place where people were treated equally, and their kids would have an amazing life.

I served in two administrations very high up in the Justice Department.

The Supreme Court should televise its proceedings.

When it comes to investigating a president, the special counsel regulations I had the privilege of drafting in 1998-99 say that such inquiries have one ultimate destination: Congress.

We have learned Trump’s disregard for the truth, and the rule of law is real.

If you are looking for someone to break the mold, the last guy you look to is Robert Mueller.

The idea that the special counsel regulations, which were written to provide the public with confidence against a coverup, would empower an attorney general to restrict disclosure in an investigation of the president is a nonstarter.

The Supreme Court has been very clear: when it comes to religious discrimination, you can take intent into consideration.

Merrick Garland was the most qualified nominee, not just in our lifetimes but perhaps in the history of the United States Supreme Court. The chief judge of the D.C. Circuit for 20 years, the nation’s second-highest court. Never once been overruled by the Court in his 20 years. He was extraordinary.