Quotes About Law

And it must be explained that Miss Anne Prettyman was supposed to be specially efficient in teaching Roman history to her pupils, although she was so manifestly ignorant of the course of law in the country in which she lived.

The case dragged itself on slowly, and little Anna Murray was a child of nine years old when at last the Earl was acquitted of the criminal charge which had been brought against him. During all this time he had been absent. Even had there been a wish to bring him personally into court, the law

Even if both bride and groom were Catholics, they could not get married legally by a Catholic priest in a Catholic church: such a ceremony would have no status under the law, with all the consequent penalties. The Marriage Act of 1753, which had relaxed the rules for other dissenting religions, left out the Catholics.

One feature of the trial – as with all other trials – was of course the fact that the jury consisted entirely of Protestants, Catholics being debarred from jury service.

In the manifested world, metaphysically speaking, evil is the permanent law, and what is good is an effort and already one more cruelty added to the other.

Grant Gilmore: "In Heaven there will be no law, and the lion will lie down with the lamb….In Hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.

A written constitution is needed to protect values AGAINST prevailing wisdom.

Antonin Scalia

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it: "We do not inquire what the legislature meant; we ask only what the statute means.

For example, the ambiguities in a contract will be construed against the party that drafted the document (contra proferentem).

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent.

In other words, we are not writing a treatise on legislation or on the law of contracts or, for that matter, on the Constitution. Our subject is solely interpretation: how a legal message is to be received by those who must apply its directives.

several historians have emphasized, the country which had so desired law and order in 1933 ended up with one of the most criminal and irresponsible regimes in history. The result was that its own people, above all the women and children of East Prussia, faced

Self-preservation is the first and strongest law of nature

For I have been called among the deep thinkers the worse cause on this very account, that I first contrived how to speak against both law and justice; and this art is worth more than ten thousand staters, that one should choose the worse cause, and nevertheless be victorious.

I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

The Law is Reason free from Passion.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.

One who asks the law to rule, therefore, is held to be asking god and intellect alone to rule, while one who asks man adds the beast. Desire is a thing of this sort; and spiritedness perverts rulers and the best men. Hence law is intellect without appetite.

When then the law has spoken in general terms, and there arises a case of exception to the general rule, it is proper, in so far as the lawgiver omits the case and by reason of his universality of statement is wrong, to set right the omission by ruling it as the lawgiver himself would rule were he there present, and would have provided by law had he foreseen the case would arise.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law & justice he is the worst.