Quotes About Precedents

The majority in the Senate is prepared to restore the Senate's traditions and precedents to ensure that regardless of party, any president's judicial nominees, after full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. . . . The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much, soon to forget it. . . .

He found the courses at law school ill-suited to his temperament, noting critically that the professors were more concerned with "what law is, not what it ought to be," emphasizing legal precedents rather than justice.

The Supreme Court overrules, distinguishes, and upholds prior precedents. Sometimes it ignores them. But it does not - cannot - 'defy' them.

When I went to law school, which after all was back in the dark ages, we never looked beyond our borders for precedents. As a state court judge, it never would have occurred to me to do so, and when I got to the Supreme Court, it was very much the same. We just didn't do it.

Precedents once established are so much positive power.

While the Bible was the definitive reference point for settling questions of doctrine and practice, questions not clearly settled by Scripture that were of theological importance were numerous (and difficult), and churches could not always look to precedents in church history as a guide. The difficulty of resolving disputes is evident in an even more serious controversy from the late second century.

Precedents are dangerous things; let the rein of government then be braced and held with a steady hand.

To follow foolish precedents, and wink With both our eyes, is easier than to think.

Trump's years in office are years we cannot get back. But more dangerous than the loss of time is allowing Trump's precedents to take root.

I think the thing that you've seen with Donald Trump is that he doesn't - he doesn't look to the past and say, 'I've got to conform to these precedents.'

Few realise that English poetry is rather like the British constitution, surrounded by pompous precedents and reverences.

Defining marriage is a power that should be left to the states. Moreover, no state should be forced to recognize a marriage that is not within its own laws, Constitution, and legal precedents.

What will be the fate of all these lawyers once sophisticated search algorithms can locate more precedents in a day than a human can in a lifetime, and once brain scans can reveal lies and deceptions at the press of a button?

What we call originality is no more than ignorance of antecedents.

The American Civil Liberties Union, has helped neutralize the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our legal system by seeking new legal precedents.

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.

To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.

Read the right books. Learn how those who have preceded you have handled the challenges you are currently facing.

If you are strong enough, there are no precedents.

nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.

I am well aware of the influence which the nature of a country and its political precedents exercise upon a constitution; and I should regard it as a great misfortune for mankind if liberty were to exist all over the world under the same forms.

What's law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Serenity? Law -- our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don't look too closely at the law. Do, and you'll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You'll find the serenity, which is just another word for death.