Law

"No man ought to be so absurd as to make a purchase without looking at the title deeds; if he is, he must take the consequence of his own negligence."

"There is not more difference betwixt a grant and feoffment, than betwixt one egg and another."

"God forbid, that a man should lose his estate by losing his title deeds."

"I do not wish to shake titles, and I shall do precisely what our predecessors have always done—leave the case where it is. It is a rock ahead that everybody knows."

"The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, ... "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.""

"His father was a man of that strictness of conscience, that he gave over the practice of the law, because he could not understand the reason of giving colour in pleadings, which, as he thought, was to tell a lye. And that, with some other things commonly practised, seemed to him contrary to that exactness of truth and justice, which became a Christian, so that he withdrew himself from the Inns of Court to live on his estate in the country."

"I am sorry when any man is tripped by a formal objection."

"In these days if there is a question to be decided on the evidence before the Court, we are not inclined to restrict the suitor very closely to the pleadings."

"The substantial rules of pleading are founded in strong sense, and in the soundest and closest logic; and so appear, when well understood and explained : Though, by being misunderstood and misapplied, they are often made use of as instruments of chicane."

"Good matter must be pleaded in good form, in apt time, and in due order, or otherwise great advantage may be lost."

"Il serroit mervaillouse chose que vous avendrez a dedire et contrepleder cco qe vous avez avant grante en Court de recorde: It would be a strange thing if you could be admitted to deny and counterplead that which you have previously allowed in a Court of record."

"Each plea must stand or fall by itself."

"The difficulty which I feel as a Judge, and always felt at the Bar, is this: a defendant is entitled to put his back against the wall and to fight from every available point of advantage."

"A plaintiff who comes into a Court of justice must show that he is in a condition to maintain his action."

"Wherever a man neglects to take advantage of any defence which he has at the time, he waives it."

"De puys ke vous ne volet respondre a leu verement ke ye vous tendent . . . nous le tenum agrante: Since you will not answer to the averment which they offer to you … we take it for granted."

"I hate and detest all frivolous pleas; but I never will make too much haste, in determining matters which may be of consequence to the subject."

"Pleading is an exact setting forth of the truth."

"Let us stand by the rules of pleading, which if we infringe here, we may destroy altogether."

"The privilege of committing for contempt is inherent in every deliberative body invested with authority by the Constitution."

"There are many ways of obstructing the Court. Endeavours are not wanting either to disturb the Judge or to influence the jury, or to keep back or pervert the testimony of witnesses, or by other methods, according to the emergency of the occasion, to obstruct the course of justice. These powers are given to the Judges to keep the course of justice free: powers of great importance to society, for by the exercise of them law and order prevail; those who are interested in wrong are shown that the law is irresistible. It is this obstruction which is called in law contempt, and it has nothing to do with the personal feelings of the Judge, and no Judge would allow his personal feelings to have any weight in the matter. According to my experience, the personal feelings of the Judges have never had the slightest influence in the exercise of these powers entrusted to them for the purpose of supporting the dignity of their important office; and so far as my observation goes, they have been uniformly exercised for the good of the people."

"Committals for contempt of Court are ordinarily in cases where some contempt ex facie of the Court has been committed, or for comments on cases pending in the Courts. However, there can be no doubt that there is a third head of contempt of Court by the publication of scandal matter of the Court itself. . . . Committal for contempt of Court is a weapon to be used sparingly, and always with reference to the interests of the administration of justice. Hence, when a trial has taken place and the case is over the Judge or the jury are given over to criticism. Committals for contempt of Court by scandalising the Court itself have become obsolete in this country. Courts are satisfied to leave to public opinion attacks or comments derogatory or scandalous to them."

"From the earliest period of our history this authority has been exercised. The Year-books record instances of such commitments."

"It is truly remarked that all the particular instances of contempts it would be endless to enumerate."

"The law has armed the High Court of Justice with the power, and imposed on it the duty of preventing brevi manu and by summary proceedings any attempt to interfere with the administration of justice. It is on that ground, and not on any exaggerated notion of the dignity of individuals that insults to Judges are not allowed."

"It seems to me that this jurisdiction of committing for contempt being practically arbitrary and unlimited, should be most jealously and carefully watched, and exercised, if I may say so, with the greatest reluctance and the greatest anxiety on the part of Judges to see whether there is no other mode which is not open to the objection of arbitrariness, and which can be brought to bear upon the subject."

"Vus nus dirrez en un autre manere comment yl est plus procheyn heyr, ou vous demurrz sanz manger et beyre jekes demyn matyn enclos. (You shall tell us in another way how he was next heir, or you shall remain shut up without eating or drinking until to-morrow morning.)"

"There are three different sorts of contempt. One kind of contempt is scandalizing the Court itself. There may be likewise a contempt of this Court, in abusing parties who are concerned in causes here. There may be also a contempt of this Court, in prejudicing mankind against persons before the cause is heard. There cannot be anything of greater consequence than to keep the streams of justice clear and pure, that parties may proceed with safety both to themselves and their characters."

"The object of the discipline enforced by the Court in case of contempt of court is not to vindicate the dignity of the Court or the person of the Judge, but to prevent undue interference with the administration of justice."

"The phrase "contempt of court" often misleads persons not lawyers, and causes them to misapprehend its meaning, and to suppose that a proceeding for contempt of court amounts to some process taken for the purpose of vindicating the personal dignity of the Judges, and protecting them from personal insults as individuals. Very often it happens that contempt is committed by a personal attack on a Judge or an insult offered to him; but as far as their dignity as individuals is concerned, it is of very subordinate importance compared with the vindication of the dignity of the Court itself; and there would be scarcely a case, I think, in which any Judge would consider that, as far as his personal dignity goes, it would be worth while to take any steps."

"It is not only the feeling, of which she cannot divest herself, against making a person of the Jewish religion, a Peer; but she cannot think that one who owes his great wealth to contracts with foreign Governments for Loans, or to successful speculation on the Stock Exchange, can fairly claim a British Peerage. However high Sir L. Rothschild may stand personally in public estimation, this seems to her not less a species of gambling because it is on a gigantic scale and far removed from that legitimate trading which she delights to honour, in which men have raised themselves by patient industry and unswerving probity to positions of wealth and influence."

"The creation of a peer is an exercise of one of the prerogatives of the Crown, which the Crown possesses, like all other prerogatives, for the good of the country, and which ought to be exercised solely with reference to the public welfare and the merits of the individual to be promoted, and the cause or occasion of his promotion."

"I believe that obiter dicta, like the proverbial chickens of destiny, come home to roost sooner or later in a very uncomfortable way to the Judges who have uttered them, and are a great source of embarrassment in future cases."

"Obiter dicta might be applied to many a volume in its entirety, to many a page of opinion for its mere prolixity."

"Indiana has more Courts and more Judges and annually issues more reports than all England. Our reports seem to get more voluminous and contain less law. The first volume of Blackford has 432 pages and contains 504 cases. The last volume of Indiana reports has 700 pages and 179 cases. Comparison of the first and 'last volume of reports of any other State will show like numerical results. Does this signify? Yes, verily, it does signify. It signifies all too much. Do lawyers at the bar or Judges on the bench carefully reason or copiously remember 1 Is the law a matter of reasoning, or is it a matter of searching for cases in point?"

"I am myself a lecturer on a branch of the law in a reputable law college. At the beginning of my course, or at the end, or, mayhap, many times ad interim, I tell my classes there is no logical, coherent, justifiable law on the subject; that there are decisions galore, and that those decisions will control in the trial Courts, not because they are right, but because they are decisions bound in calf, or sheep, or hide of some other animal. I advise them to search well these volumes in animal skin, and say that the lawyer who finds most opinions leaning his way will succeed the best. It is not a question of logic or elementary law of the sort that is the 'perfection of reason.' It is simply a question of numerical strength. 'The Lord is on the side of the heaviest battalions,' said Napoleon."

"A long time ago an old man wished that his adversary would write a book. It needs no argument to prove that no lawyer ever said that; our enemies have written books, lots of them; too many of them such as they are; and the spoiling of paper goes merrily on. 'Much study is a weariness of the flesh," it is true, but winnowing chaff for an occasional grain of wheat is more weariness still. Are we for ever to roll at the ever increasing stone of Sisyphus, or shall we make some effort to relieve ourselves and our successors?"

"Oliver Wendell Holmes said he doubted not that if all the medicines in the world were dumped into the sea it would be a great deal better for the human family, though a great deal worse for the fishes. Some such remark could be made about our voluminous libraries. If something violent should happen to all the law reports now crowding our shelves, and all, or nearly all, of the books of alleged authors on particular branches of the law—such books being in the main a product of scissors, paste-pot, and a 10-dollars a week drudge—would anybody suffer!"

"The supposed great library at Alexandria was destroyed by the men of Mohammed for the, to them, satisfactory reason that if the books in it agreed with the Koran they were unnecessary, and if they did not agree with it they were unsound. Will ever some devoted advocate or some legions of such devotees of the real law—the red-eyed kind, if you please —arise and settle this question by a conflagration?"

"Does anybody believe we can allow our presses to go on for ever belching out books that are of such value that every lawyer must know what is or what is not in the motley throng before he can feel safe? Nay, verily. There must, in some way, from somewhere, come relief."

"There are 166 volumes of Massachusetts reports, 165 volumes of United States Supreme Court reports, and hundreds and thousands of reports of other States. Every year adds to the reports of the Courts of this country about 250 volumes and about sixty volumes of text-books. 'Words, words, words.' Ben Butler to the contrary notwithstanding, all of these words are law unless they have been pronounced obiter dicta."

"Polonius asked Hamlet what he was reading. 'Words, words, words,' said Hamlet, and called the writer a ' satirical rogue.' Ben Butler was seen in a railroad train reading what appeared to be a law book, and was asked, 'Are you reading law, general?' 'No,' said he; 'only a volume of Massachusetts reports.'"

"Borne says, 'Nothing is permanent but change.' And so we have to say of the law. We can never rest secure upon any opinion until we have searched later reports for an opinion modifying or reversing it or declaring some of its vital parts obiter dicta."

"Take the case of the Home Insurance Company v. Morse, in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a statute of Wisconsin requiring an insurance company of another State to agree that it would not remove a case against it to the United States Circuit Court was 'illegal and void' and therefore not binding on the company. Then read, and rub your eyes as you read, the same Court in Doyle v. The Continental Insurance Company, in which it was held that the State may prescribe any condition that it may deem proper, whether constitutional or not, upon which corporations of other States may enter its borders, using language which was long held as a sword over companies that contemplated taking a case to the United States Circuit Court in that State, or in other States having a like statute. Years afterwards we have from the same Court Barron v. Burnside, in which it was held that the ominous part of Doyle v. The Continental Insurance Company was obiter dictum; holding further that no conditions can be imposed by a State upon corporations foreign to it which are repugnant to the Constitution and laws of the United states. Such an episode reminds one of the trick on Falstaff that was 'argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a jest for ever.'"

"After having bowed to the supposed law, as found in an opinion of a High Court for years, we are suddenly told that the Judge who wrote the opinion was 'off his base,' so to speak, and what he said was not the law at all, or, at least, he had no business to have then said it was the law."

"This sort of thing reminds one of what Artemus Ward said in his lecture on the Mormons: 'One of the principal features of my entertainment is that it contains so many things that don't have anything to do with it.' We have been succeeding or failing because of something in an opinion which turns out to have no right to a place in the judicial utterance. A man who has carefully wound up his clock every night for twenty years and then learns that it is an eight-day clock has less reason for feeling bad than a lawyer who has lost a case or been guided in advice given by something that turns out to be obiter."

"We are taught that we may disregard all obiter dicta, but, as we are never sure what the law in a given case is until some Court has given an opinion in the reports, equally are we never sure what is unnecessary law, the obiter dicta of an opinion, until some later Court so informs us. That which we have for years quoted as authority is, in later expressions, stripped of its conclusiveness and made simply an impertinence. Not only does the superfluous expression which has been cited or acted upon as decisive become indecisive, it becomes a reproach to the Judge who wrote it."

"A child wandering in a cemetery, after reading the effusive inscriptions, all too superfluous after the statement that a dead man is below, asks where the bad people are buried. A reader of reports, searching for authority, sighs that so much is said when so much less would amply suffice."

"There is a deal of difference in what should be on the monument and what is on it, and there is equal difference in what should be in the opinions of the Courts of last resort and what the Judges speaking for the Court find time to inject. The elegies and eulogies on the plain memorial slab and the massive monument are often obiter—not meant seriously—and superfluous. The Judges of the law Courts in bank and the Chancellors in their meditative chambers are as much given to superfluous utterances as are the postmortem inscription in marble. Obiter dicta is a vice common to both."

"Whether a man goes down with a law bullet in a vital part or is wearied out as is the fish before being landed, where he may gasp his life out; whether he dies with one convulsion after a swallow of prussic acid or dreamily passes away in the solace of an opium overdraught, is perhaps no matter in the end. In the processes there is a vast difference, but the tombstones—the reports of that Court which has the last say—read very much alike. The figure is, perhaps, not a bad one."