Quotes About Precedent

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Judge Roberts has assured me personally that he has a healthy respect for precedent and the hard-won rights of Americans.

In a period of less than 150 years, to progress from slavery to Pennsylvania Avenue speaks volumes about this family and our nation. Distracted by the rush of our everyday life, we might shrug it off today, but 100 years from now, historians will be discussing this precedent.

We didn't call it World War I. How could we imagine there'd be a second?

To one degree or another every president is haunted by those who went before, but few so literally as Johnson. No president had ever witnessed the slaying of his predecessor or endured such a brutal transfer of power.

The Christian religion, hand in hand with various philosophical outlooks, has motivated, sanctioned, and shaped large portions of the Western scientific heritage. Modern Christians ought to drink deeply at the well of historical precedent. If we do, we will never feel intimidated by positivists and others who deny that religion has any role in genuine scholarship. In the broad scope of history, that claim is itself a temporary aberration-a mere blip on the screen, already beginning to fade.

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.

Or, as Philip Ruddock, Howard's immigration minister, put it to the author: 'Indonesia will work with you if you don't decide to embarrass them over it.' Yet this is exactly what the Abbott opposition had done. It violated the Howard precedent and the Ruddock rule by broadcasting the tow-back plan loud and long.