The following are quotes from the leaders of the design of the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse:

"This most beautiful site in Boston does not belong to the judges. It does not belong to the lawyers. It does not belong to the federal government. It does not belong to the litigants. It belongs to the public. And if the public cannot use this site and see it as theirs—if every man, woman and child in Boston cannot take a walk on this pier, and see it as theirs and use it so that they can look out across the city and enjoy that beautiful site, and enjoy this public space—if they cannot do that, then we will have failed to achieve an important goal of this courthouse project."
—Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States


"The new federal courthouse in Boston is intended to reclaim and extend a tradition of distinctiveness, an excellence in American courthouse design that was lost during the past century. It does so by reinterpreting and embodying the soul of the American judicial system. The soul of the American judicial system is the public, disinterested, and reasoned resolution of individual disputes. Animating that soul is the direct and constitutionally prescribed involvement of lay citizens as jurors in the determination of the facts underlying legal controversies. The new federal courthouse in Boston seeks to reach out and again engage the community from which the judicial system derives its persuasive authority. It is designed to fulfill the obligation contained in the oath every federal judge must take and both be, and appear to be, a place designed to 'do equal right to the poor and to the rich.' In all its aspects, the building must present a quiet, dignified setting to which the public is not merely invited—but is drawn—to observe, learn about, and participate in a unique public function: the calm resolution of conflict before decision makers who have no other goal than to give each litigant a fair hearing."
—Judge Douglas Woodlock, U.S. District Judge, District of Massachusetts

 
"...the decision to build the new U.S. Courthouse...was a command to give voice, through architecture, to those aspirations and beliefs that underlie the American system of jurisprudence. Among these none seems more fundamental or more deserving of vigorous reaffirmation than the principle that every citizen shall have equal access to the law and to the guarantee of due process embodied in an independent judiciary. To assert this principle—that the courts are open to all—therefore became the first goal motivating the design of the new courthouse."

A second intention, corollary to the first, is to make available to every citizen the extraordinary experience of this site at which, by virtue of its close encounter with downtown Boston, the meeting of city and sea is most vividly dramatized. And in pursuing this goal we seek also to achieve a third intention: to show how civic building and civic space, conceived together, can each confer meaning and value on the other.

Finally, we seek to embody in this courthouse those qualities that most notably characterize the judicial proceedings it will house: probity, clarity, restraint and respect for precedent joined with responsiveness to ever-changing societal needs. These qualities invite an architecture that both celebrates and moves beyond the traditions of its place."
—Henry N. Cobb, PEI Cobb Freed & Partners, Architects