Lawyers From England

"Remaining in a form of customs union after a transition post-Brexit phase remained a possible end destination for the Labour party."

"What a pathetic spectacle: the dying act of his [Boris Johnson's] political career is to parrot that nonsense. As for those who are left, they are only in office because no one else is prepared to debase themselves any longer—the charge of the lightweight brigade. Have some self-respect! For a week, he has had them defending his decision to promote [Chris Pincher] a sexual predator. Every day, the lines he has forced them to take have been untrue: first, that he was unaware of any allegation—untrue; then, that he was unaware of any “specific” allegation—untrue; then, that he was unaware of any “serious, specific” allegation; and now he wants them to go out and say that he simply forgot that his Whip was a sexual predator. Anyone with anything about them would be long gone from his Front Bench. In the middle of a crisis, does the country not deserve better than a Z-list cast of nodding dogs?"

"The principle of what I want to achieve is clear: if you are anti-Semitic, you cannot and should not be in the Labour Party. No ifs, no buts."

"I've got to do Kinnock and Blair's job in one term."

"There are four elections on Thursday 6 May."

"The police don't normally look back and investigate things that have taken place a year ago."

"The British are among the worst idlers in the world."

"The typical user of a food bank is not someone that's languishing in poverty, it's someone who has a cash flow problem."

"I've got say, on this take the knee thing – which, I don't know, maybe it's got a broader history but it seems to be taken from the Game of Thrones – feels to me like a symbol of subjugation and subordination, rather than one of liberation and emancipation."

"I think it's understandable there are jitters on all sides of this debate and we need to hold our nerve. The end is in sight in terms of a good deal - the prize we want - a good deal with the EU and I think colleagues should wait and see what that looks like."

"In fact the sea wasn't open."

"We are – and I hadn't quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and if you look at how we trade in goods – we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing."

"is absolutely wrong whether it's a man against a woman or a woman against a man."

"The NHS is not for sale to any country and never would be."

"I actually campaigned for Brexit, and I made it very clear in every speech I gave that we would be economically worse off."

"Not one job in Britain is at risk because of losing our EU membership, not one, because there would be a free trade agreement, because we're so important to Europe."

"Every Court is the guardian of its own records, and master of its own practice."

"It is between the stirrup and the ground, Brother; but you may amend by replying."

"It will appear, no doubt, that at various periods of our history there have been decisions as to the nature and description of the religious solemnities necessary for the completion of a perfect marriage, which cannot be reconciled together; but there will be found no authority to contravene the general position, that at all times, by the common law of England, it was essential to the constitution of a full and complete marriage, that there must be some religious solemnity; that both modes of obligation should exist together, the civil and the religious."

"Judicial decisions in Courts of justice are ranked by Lord Hale as one of the grounds or constituents of the common law."

"The intention of the testator is the polar star by which we must be guided."

"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."

"It is to be remembered that contracts in restraint of trade are in themselves, if nothing more appears to show them reasonable, bad in the eye of the law."

"There is no reason for assuming, that the time of medical men and attornies is more valuable than that of others whose livelihood depends on their own exertions."

"Immemorial enjoyment is the most solid of all titles."

"Whatever is injurious to the interests of the public is void, on the grounds of public policy."

"We should not be too strict in construing instruments or contracts generally drawn up on the spur of the moment."

"Whatever restraint is larger than the necessary protection of the party, can be of no benefit to either, it can only be oppressive; and if oppressive, it is, in the eye of the law unreasonable."

"It is fraud in law if a party makes representations which he knows to be false, and injury ensues, although the motives from which the representations proceeded may not have been bad."

"The House of Saud knows full well that it cannot survive the forces of change, that it cannot withstand the inevitable tide of history and that it will in due course be swept away as the clamour for governmental transparency and social justice grows."

"No one should be fooled into believing that Saudi Arabia is striving towards a more open and pluralistic form of government. ... The very opposite is true, what we are witnessing is a that is tightening its grip on the social fabric of society, choking all forms of open debate, suffocating civil society, silencing the voice of reform and imprisoning those who are striving towards modernity."

"Saudi Arabia's addiction to the blood cult of public execution demeans and humiliates not only the victims, but all those who participate in the process and Saudi society as a whole."

"A great deal of difficulty has been caused in the administration of the law, and particularly of the common law, by decisions in which technical rules have been formulated which were not true—that is, were not in accordance with the facts of the case."

"Where a man calls himself by a name which is not his name, he is telling a falsehood."

"Public policy requires that some hardship should be suffered by individuals rather than that judicial proceedings should be held in secret."

"Well, then, the moment there is a patent case one can see it before the case is opened, or called in the list. How can we see it? We can see it by a pile of books as high as this invariably... Now, what is the result of all this? Why that a man had better have his patent infringed, or have anything happen to him in this world, short of losing all his family by influenza, than have a dispute about a patent. His patent is swallowed up, and he is ruined. Whose fault is it? It is really not the fault of the law; it is the fault of the mode of conducting the law in a patent case. This is what causes all this mischief."

"In the administration of justice, whether by a recognised legal Court or by persons who, although not a legal public Court, are acting in a similar capacity, public policy requires that, in order that there should be no doubt about the purity of the administration, any person who is to take part in it should not be in such a position that he might be suspected of being biassed."

"An amendment ought not to be allowed if it will occasion injustice; but if it can do no injustice, and will only save expense, it ought to be made."

"I for one will not re-open the floodgates of Admiralty jurisdiction upon the people of this country."

"I do not think that a Judge would wish any statement which he may have made in the course of a case, merely obiter and casually, to be treated as necessarily being an authority on the subject in question; but when a Judge has thought it necessary for the purpose of a case to make a deliberate examination of the practice of his Court, and to state such practice, I do not think the authority of such statement can be got rid of merely by arguing that it was not really necessary for the actual decision of the case. I think that such a statement if cited as an authority is entitled to great weight, though of course not binding on us as a decision."

"It seems to me that whenever circumstances arise in the ordinary business of life in which, if two persons were ordinarily honest and careful, the one of them would make a promise to the other, it may properly be inferred that both of them understood that such a promise was given and accepted."

"Personally, I detest any attempt to bring the law into maxims. Maxims are invariably wrong, that is, they are so general and large that they always include something which is not intended to be included."

"To my mind when a great Judge, a master of the whole subject, thinking it necessary for the decision of the case to carefully examine into and to state the practice, it is nothing to say as against that, that it was not necessary for the decision."

"Working days in England are not the same as working days in foreign ports, because working days in England, by the custom and habits of the English, if not by their law, do not include Sundays."

"I agree that is the law, though I think it is a hard law; but we have nothing to do with the question of hardship."

"Parties cannot by consent give to the Court a power which it would not have without it."

"As to proceedings in Courts of justice, it is for the interest of all the public to hear what takes place in Court."

"The Court ought never to come to the conclusion that two cases in the same Court, or in Courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction, are in conflict, unless it is obliged to. I agree that if two cases are in conflict the Court must say with which of them it agrees."

"To the memory of Sir Thomas Denison, Knt., this monument was erected by his afflicted widow. He was an affectionate husband, a generous relation, a sincere friend, a good citizen and most importantly an honest man. Skilled in all the learning of the common law, he raised himself to great eminence in his profession; and showed by his practice, that a thorough knowledge of the legal art and form is not litigious, or an instrument of chicane, but the plainest, easiest, and shortest way to the end of strife. For the sake of the public he was pressed, and at the last prevailed upon, to accept the office of a judge in the Court of King's Bench. He discharged the important trust of that high office with unsuspected integrity, and uncommon ability. The clearness of his understanding, and the natural probity of his heart, led him immediately to truth, equity, and justice; the precision and extent of his legal knowledge enabled him always to find the right way of doing what was right. A zealous friend to the constitution of his country, he steadily adhered to the fundamental principle upon which it is built, and by which alone it can be maintained, a religious application of the inflexible rule of law to all questions concerning the power of the crown, and privileges of the subject. He resigned his office February 14, 1765, because from the decay of his health and the loss of his eyesight, he found himself unable any longer to execute it. He died September 8, 1765, without issue, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. He wished to be buried in his native country, and in this church. He lies here near the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, who by a resolute and judicious exertion of authority, supported law and government in a manner which has perpetuated his name, and made him an example famous to posterity."

"The custom of the city of London is a matter of fact."