Law

"If the law be thought to be improper or inconvenient, application to correct it must be made elsewhere, and not to those who are bound by the repeated and solemn judgments of their predecessors."

"Whereas Congress recognizes the historical tradition of ethical values and principles which are the basis of civilized society and upon which our great Nation was founded; Whereas these ethical values and principles have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization, when they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws ..."

"A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship."

"The law of England will not sanction what is inconsistent with humanity."

"The law rarely hesitates in declaring its own meaning; but the Judges are frequently puzzled to find out the meaning of others."

"What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow; this is the whole law. All the rest is a commentary to this law; go and learn it."

"But speaking of rules, you've been arrested dozens of times in your life. Specific incidents aside, what's common to these run-ins? Where do you stand vis-à-vis the law? "Goddammit. Yeah, I have. First, there's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don't. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How's that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma.""

"The law protects nothing in that very respect, in which it is, at the same time, in the eye of the law, a crime."

"If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process."

"The law does not act vindictively."

"Judges could by their resolution alter the practice, but never the law."

"Law and conscience are one and the same."

"The only law that a Christian should listen to and read is the law of God's Commandments. And it is not right to comply with, implement or observe any other law."

"The law has respect to human infirmity."

"It is important, of course, that controversies be settled right, but there are many civil questions which arise between individuals in which it is not so important the controversy be settled one way or another as that it be settled. Of course a settlement of a controversy on a fundamentally wrong principle of law is greatly to be deplored, but there must of necessity be many rules governing the relations between members of the same society that are more important in that their establishment creates a known rule of action than that they proceed on one principle or another. Delay works always for the man with the longest purse."

"The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free."

"The law is for the protection of the weak more than the strong."

"The law is not apt to catch at actions."

"It was nobly said in another place (I heard it with pleasure, and thought it becoming the dignity of the person who pronounced it, and the place in which it was pronounced) "that the law is best applied, when it is subservient to the honesty of the case.""

"The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed--and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves."

"Rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis."

"The sparks of all the sciences in the world are raked up in the ashes of the law."

"It is of very little consequence to the public to lay down definite rules of law, if you have indefinite rules of evidence."

"Illegality is not to be presumed; it is to be alleged and proved when it does not appear on the face of the instrument itself."

""Whatever a despot by enactment constrains the citizens to do without persuasion, is the negation of law?”“Everything, I think, that men constrain others to do without persuasion, whether by enactment or not, is not law, but force.”"

"You would oppose law to socialism. But it is the law which socialism invokes. It aspires to legal, not extra-legal plunder…. You wish to prevent it from taking any part in the making of laws. You would keep it outside the Legislative Palace. In this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal plunder is the basis of the legislation within. It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be determined, and there are only three solutions of it:— 1. When the few plunder the many. 2. When everybody plunders everybody else. 3. When nobody plunders anybody. Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we have to make our choice. The law can only produce one of these results. Partial plunder.—This is the system which prevailed so long as the elective privilege was partial; a system which is resorted to, to avoid the invasion of socialism. Universal plunder.—We have been threatened by this system when the elective privilege has become universal; the masses having conceived the idea of making law, on the principle of legislators who had preceded them. Absence of plunder.—This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, conciliation, and of good sense."

"It has been sometimes said, communis error facit jus; but I say communis opinio is evidence of what the law is; not where it is an opinion merely floating and theoretical floating in the minds of persons but where it has been made the ground-work and substratum of practice."

"I cannot be brought to believe that this country will suffer if the Court refuses further to aggrandize the presidential office, already so potent and so relatively immune from judicial review, at the expense of Congress.But I have no illusion that any decision by this Court can keep power in the hands of Congress if it is not wise and timely in meeting its problems. A crisis that challenges the President equally, or perhaps primarily, challenges Congress. If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that "The tools belong to the man who can use them." We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers.The essence of our free Government is "leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the law" -- to be governed by those impersonal forces which we call law. Our Government is fashioned to fulfill this concept so far as humanly possible. The Executive, except for recommendation and veto, has no legislative power. The executive action we have here originates in the individual will of the President, and represents an exercise of authority without law. No one, perhaps not even the President, knows the limits of the power he may seek to exert in this instance, and the parties affected cannot learn the limit of their rights. We do not know today what powers over labor or property would be claimed to flow from Government possession if we should legalize it, what rights to compensation would be claimed or recognized, or on what contingency it would end. With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations. Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up."

"We cannot judge of the fact, but the law upon the fact."

"Initia magistratum nostrorum meliora, ferme finis inclinat."

"I cannot help thinking that where a person appeals to the Law of England, he must take his remedy according to the Law of England to which he has appealed."

"No person is less disposed than I am to accommodate the law to the particular convenience of the case: but I am always glad when I find the strict law and the justice of the case going hand in hand together."

"It is true as a general proposition that knowledge of the law must be imputed to every person, but it would be too much to impute knowledge of this rule of equity; election as a question of intention of course implies knowledge."

"The laws alone are they that always speak with all persons, high or low, in one and the same impartial voice. The law knows no favourites."

"You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator: that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lies in perverting, confounding, and eluding them."

"Who ever knew an honest brute at law his neighbor prosecute?"

"Lex est sanctio jiista jubens honesta et prohibens contraria. Lex est summa ratio. Ratio est anima legis. Nulla vetita ant turpia praesumuntur, sed contraria omnia legitima ataue honesta. The common lawe itselfe is nothing else but reason; which is to be understood of an artificiall perfection of reason, gotten by long study, observation, and of experience, and not of every man's natural reason; for nemo nascitur artifem. This legall reason est summa ratio. And therefore if all the reason that is dispersed into so many severall heads, were united into one, yet could he not make such a law as the law of England is, because by many successions of ages it hath been fined and refined by an infinite number of grave and learned men, and by long experience growne to such a perfection, for the gouvernment of this realme, as the old rule may be justly verified of it, neminem oportet esse sapientiorem legibus: no man, out of his own private reason, ought to be wiser than the law, which is the perfection of reason."

"Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts."

"The law would be a strange science if it rested solely upon Cases; and if after so large an increase of Commerce, Arts and Circumstances accruing, we must go to the time of Rich. I. to find a Case and see what is law."

"It has been said that ignorance of law is no excuse, but when the Court has a discretion the petitioner's ignorance of the law may be properly excused."

"Very happily, the more the law is looked into, the more it appears founded in equity, reason, and good sense."

"We look upon this shaken Earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails. The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard. And to attain it, we must be aware of its full meaning — and ready to pay its full price. We know clearly what we seek, and why. We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself. Yet this peace we seek cannot be born of fear alone: it must be rooted in the lives of nations. There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce. There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak. But the law of which we speak, comprehending the values of freedom, affirms the equality of all nations, great and small. Splendid as can be the blessings of such a peace, high will be its cost: in toil patiently sustained, in help honorably given, in sacrifice calmly borne."

"It is far more important the law should be administered with absolute integrity, than that in this case or in that the law should be a good law or a bad one."

"There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture."

"That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed."

"It being a maxim that three things are always favoured in law, life, liberty and dower."

"Every man (who is of sufficient understanding to be responsible for his actions) is supposed to be cognizant of the law, as it is the rule by which every subject of the kingdom is to be governed, and therefore it is his business to know it."

"Every man must be taken to be cognizant of the law, otherwise there is no saying to what extent the excuse of ignorance may not be Law carried. It would be urged in almost every case."

"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool."

"Law is the rule, principle, obligation or requirement of natural justice."