Quotes About Law

The law wasn't perfect, but anytime those who had the power to twist it did so, it grew more grotesque.

This is New York, and there's no law against being annoying.

I rather doubt he had the sense to see the truth: that there are wounds worse than fatal, which the law's little binary distinctions-guilty/innocent, criminal/victim-cannot fathom, let alone fix. The law is a hammer, not a scalpel.

The truth is, the best win-lost records are not built on great trial work. They are built on cherry-picking only the strongest cases for trial and pleading out the rest, regardless of the right and wrong of it.

Even the wettest violence, in the end, is cooked down to the stuff of court cases; a ream of paper, a few exhibits, a dozen...witnesses. The world looks away, and why not?

The truth is, the best won-lost records are not built on great trial work. They are built on cherry-picking only the strongest cases for trial and pleading out the rest, regardless of the right and wrong of it.

There is an ancient rule: actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea—"the act does not create guilt unless the mind is also guilty." That is why we do not convict children, drunks, and schizophrenics: they are incapable of deciding to commit their crimes with a true understanding of the significance of their actions. Free will is as important to the law as it is to religion or any other code of morality. We do not punish the leopard for its wildness.

A jury could only declare my son 'not guilty', never 'innocent'.

Free will is as important to the law as it is to religion or any other code of morality. We do not punish the leopard for its wildness.

In court, the thing we punish is the criminal intention. -the mens rea, the guilty mind. There is an ancient rule: actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea - "the act does not create guilt unless the mind is also guilty." That is why we do not convict children, drunks, and schizophrenics: they are incapable of deciding to commit their crimes with a true understanding of the significance of their actions. Free will is as important to the law as it is to religion or any other code of morality.

there are wounds worse than fatal, which the law's little binary distinctions—guilty/innocent, criminal/victim—cannot fathom, let alone fix. The law is a hammer, not a scalpel.

Let us be practical in our expectations of the Criminal Law.… [For] we have merely to imagine, by some trick of time travel, meeting our earliest hominid ancestor, Adam, a proto-man, short of stature, luxuriantly furred, newly bipedal, foraging about on the African savannah three million or so years ago. Now, let us agree that we may pronounce whatever laws we like for this clever little creature, still it would be unwise to pet him.

It is a common architectural strategy to build courtrooms without windows, to enhance the effect of a chamber isolated from the everyday world, a theater for the great and timeless work of the law.

Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means a defense, as in a court of law. Christian apologetics involves making a case for the truth of the Christian faith.

I looked at the jury, raised an eyebrow. I work on that in the mirror at home, the one raised eyebrow. It should be a course of its own in law school. You sort of have to relax one half of your face, contract the muscles on the other, all while keeping a sweetly sardonic expression. You do it wrong, you look like you just ate bad jalapeño. You do it right, it denotes skepticism, it denotes shared knowledge, it was as good as shouting to the jury.

That which is not just is not law.

God never intended the law to be the means of giving life. Rather it was designed to bring the knowledge of sin and to convict of sin.

The law told people what to do but gave them no power to do it. It was given to reveal sin, not to be a savior.

I was surprised that anyone can have a pistol here, if he wants it. In New York, having a pistol is one of the worst things you can possibly do." "You have to have a permit," said Emory. "That is, everybody but the crook that shoots you has to have one. Now, we're more civilized in this state; we believe in giving the victim a chance, too.

The law's not about justice. It's a system we've put in place because we can't have justice.

Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.

Everything Dies. That is the law of life-the bitter unchangeable law

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.

Whatever the muddy reality, the image of Dublin as an undefiled community of Norman/English families who had settled in the twelfth century, married amongst their own and upheld English law, customs and orthodox religion, was a compelling story.