Quotes About Law

The courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion, when they should be using it to protect religion.

When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken.

The sea danced on the small stretch of beach, indifferent to its own eternal law and spawning its own note of caution.

Civilisation and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life.

The partisan wants to change the law, the criminal break it; the anarch wants neither. He is not for or against the law. While not acknowledging the law, he does try to recognize it like the laws of nature, and he adjusts accordingly.

None of us can know today if tomorrow morning we will not be counted as part of a group considered outside the law. In that moment the civilized veneer of life changes, as the state props of well-being disappear and are transformed into omens of destruction. The luxury liner becomes a battleship, or the black jolly roger and the red executioner's flag are hoisted on it.

Incidentally, I notice that our professors, trying to show off to their students, rant and rail against the state and against law and order, while expecting that same state to punctually pay their salaries, pensions, and family allowances, so that they value at least this kind of law and order. Make a fist with the left hand and open the right hand receptively—that is how one gets through life.

Law and custom are becoming the subjects of a new field of learning. The anarch endeavors to judge them ethnographically, historically, and also – I will probably come back to this – morally. The State will be generally satisfied with him; it will scarcely notice him In this respect he bears a certain resemblance to the criminal – say, the master spy – whose gifts are concealed behind a run-of-the-mill occupation.

But we have never stopped it [war] and never shall, because war is not the law of one age or civilization, but of eternal nature itself, out of which every civilization proceedes, and into which it must sink again if it is not hard enough to withstand its iron ordeal.

I assume that in great men whose names I dare not mention, the anarchic element was very powerful. You see, when fundamental changes are to occur in law, custom, and society, they presuppose a great distancing from established principles. And the anarch, should he take any action, is capable of working this lever.

This indicates how far the law has become dubious. People have a sense of being under foreign occupation, and in this relation the criminal appears a kindred soul.

Erwin Chemerinsky

if a state supreme court explicitly says that it is relying on state constitutional law for its decision, and there is no federal issue, the Supreme Court cannot review the state court's ruling at all.

In California v. Hodari D. in 1991, the Court held that a person who is being chased by the police is not considered to be seized until he or she is actually tackled by the officer; chasing the individual does not constitute a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.63 But fifteen states have rejected this idea and said that under their state constitutions, chasing a suspect is sufficient to constitute a seizure and thus requires at least reasonable suspicion.64

The Fourth Amendment protects people, not property, the Court stressed. A person's Fourth Amendment rights do not depend on where he or she is at the time of the government intrusion, nor on whether a physical trespass occurs.

Fourth Amendment protection against a search has a "twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable.'"11

California v. Greenwood in 1988, the Court held that when police searched a person's garbage that was left on the street for pickup, there was not a search, and no warrant was required.

As long as an officer has "reasonable suspicion" that the person has committed or might commit a crime, there can be a stop. And as long as an officer has "reasonable suspicion" that the person might have a weapon, there can be a frisk.

This decision means that the police can enter a home or a business illegally, and if they see contraband or evidence of illegal activity, they can then go to a magistrate for a warrant. The police don't have to tell the judge about their illegal entry. They

Second, where sheriffs and constables had been under local judicial authority, the police were placed under cities' executive authority.

in 2000 the Supreme Court declared this law unconstitutional, stressing that Congress by statute cannot overrule the Court's interpretation of the Constitution.

when police violate the Fourth Amendment's requirement for "knock and announce," the exclusionary rule does not apply.

post-indictment lineup is a critical stage of the proceeding and that a criminal defendant has as much right to an attorney there as at the trial itself.

Misuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law, is action taken 'under color of' state law."19