George Washington on Justice

Impressed with a conviction that the due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good Government, I have considered the first arrangement of the Judicial department as essential to the happiness of our Country, and to the stability of its political system; hence the selection of the fittest characters to expound the law, and dispense justice, has been an invariable object of my anxious concern.

—George Washington, in a letter to Attorney General Edmund Randolph concerning the selection and qualification of U.S. attorneys and judges (1789)