"The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision"
About this Quote
The subtext is aimed squarely at the "unelected judges" critique that flares up whenever courts protect unpopular groups. Boies preempts it by treating judicial invalidation of discriminatory laws as continuity, not activism. Even the phrase "including past Supreme Court decisions" quietly reminds skeptics that nearly everyone already accepts court-imposed course corrections when they flatter their politics: school desegregation, free speech, contraception. You don't get to praise those precedents and then suddenly demand majority rule when the minority in question is LGBTQ people.
Context matters: Boies was a central legal architect in the fight against California's Proposition 8, so "majority voters" isn't theoretical; it's a specific ballot-box defeat. His language leans on constitutional legitimacy ("Bill of Rights", "fundamental rights") to counter the populist romance of referenda. And "the person you love" is not accidental sentimentality; it's litigation strategy. He translates equal protection into a story about intimacy and ordinary life, making discrimination sound not like a policy preference but like state-sanctioned cruelty.
What makes the quote work is its reversal: the scary part of rights protection that courts can thwart majorities is recast as the comforting part, the reason minorities ever dare trust the system at all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Boies, David. (2026, January 17). The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-very-purpose-of-the-bill-of-rights-and-the-52145/
Chicago Style
Boies, David. "The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-very-purpose-of-the-bill-of-rights-and-the-52145/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-very-purpose-of-the-bill-of-rights-and-the-52145/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.
