Quotes About Law

noscitur a sociis

In statutory interpretation there is, for example, the rule of lenity, whereby ambiguity in a criminal law is resolved in favor of the defendant; and in interpretation of private contracts there is the rule that ambiguity will be construed contra proferentem, against the party that drafted the instrument.

Given a rule of law that [those] conditions generically described as A produce a certain legal liability or other consequence X, does the specific fact or group of facts n fall within the genus A?

As Justinian's Digest put it: A verbis legis non est recedendum1 ("Do not depart from the words of the law").

But the general/ specific canon makes all the difference if the general provision has been enacted later.

Where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment.

The ejusdem generis canon asserts that a general phrase at the end of a list is limited to the same type of things (the generic category) that are found in the specific list.

si la moral quisiera apoyarse en sanciones legales fomentaría hábitos hipócritas, y si el derecho quisiera sancionar una moral se haría sectario, fomentando el desprecio a sus leyes.

Gerald Schroeder points out that the existence of conditions favorable to life still does not explain how life itself originated. Life was able to survive only because of favorable conditions on our planet. But there is no law of nature that instructs matter to produce end-directed, self-replicating entities.

A negative person gets merely the toxic people around oneself and so s/he is seen often with many; A positive guy gains only authentic buddy around oneself and so he is seen usually without any. No mismatch possible ever and this is the first and foremost LAW OF NATURE.

Law is order in liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos.

The essence of sin is selfishness. It is the deliberate choice of self in preference to God—personal and wilful rebellion against the known law of righteousness and truth.

The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life -- to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.

It's a sociological law that the more information you give people, the more government policy becomes dependent on public opinion.' Those were the words of Rafael Safarov,

Let who will boast their courage in the field, I find but little safety from my shield. Nature's, not honour's, law we must obey: This made me cast my useless shield away, And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life, which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain; But who can get another life again?

Let who will boast their courage in the field, I find but little safety from my shield, Nature's, not honour's law we must obey: This made me cast my useless shield away.

Use it or lose it" is a law of nature, but mercifully "not a soul will be lost" is a law of the spirit that supersedes it.

An ancient tradition declares that every idiot blunder we pass into law will sooner or later redound to Athens' profit.

Law is order, and good law is good order.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.

Equity is that idea of justice which contravenes the written law.

Justice is the fundamental virtue of political society, since the order of society cannot be maintained without law, and laws are instituted to declare what is just.

The precepts of the law may be comprehended under these three points: to live honestly, to hurt no man willfully, and to render every man his due carefully.