Quotes About Justice

Negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.

Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so: we still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending.

It has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost.

If you go to the Territory opposed to slavery, and another man comes upon the same ground with his slave, upon the assumption that the things are equal, it turns out that he has the equal right all his way, and you have no part of it your way.

Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery they have a right to have it. He can say that logically, if he says that there is no wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.

Now my opinion is that the different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States, if they choose.

Have we ever had any peace on this slavery question? When are we to have peace upon it if it is kept in the position it now occupies? How are we ever to have peace upon it? That is an important question.

It strikes me there is some difference between holding a man responsible for an act which he has not done, and holding him responsible for an act that he has done.

I don't want to be unjustly accused of dealing illiberally or unfairly with an adversary, either in court, or in a political canvass, or anywhere else. I would despise myself if I supposed myself ready to deal less liberally with an adversary than I was willing to be treated myself.

Battaglia gagged her. Told her to take the high road. Fuck the high road, I said. It's usually a dead end. --Mike Chapman to Lee, Crime Scene Photographer.

More than 80 percent of sexual assaults occurred between people who knew each other, so identification was not the issue at trial. Yet these victims were far more likely to have their credibility attacked in the courtroom.

I'm telling you, the lunatics are really running the asylum when it comes to the criminal courts

Soon there'll be nothing left to the law but acronyms, DNA swabs, and every man's right to claim an exoneration the moment after he's convicted

Libra does. Winning an intellectual point or decision, however minor, major—or in the middle—is the reason for the Libra person's very existence, symbolized by the Libra Scales, balanced in perfect harmony and justice.

In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity,

Justice Ginsburg objected that the context was in fact crucially different. She said that while termination and failure to hire or promote are public acts, easily ascertained, employees of most private companies have no way of knowing what their fellow workers are being paid.

During its first two terms, February and August 1790, it had almost nothing to do. A year after its first session, the Court finally received its first case, but the case settled before argument. Six months later, in August 1791, the Court received a second case, an appeal in a commercial dispute.

The justices heard arguments, but then declared that a procedural irregularity in the appeal barred them from proceeding to a decision. Not until 1792 did the Supreme Court begin issuing opinions.

perhaps the expression of public support for the Court reflects what political scientists call the "legitimation hypothesis," the theory that once the Supreme Court rules on an issue, a measurable proportion of the public will come to the conclusion that "if they believe it, it must be right.

It was in the circuit courts that the justices fleshed out some important principles of federal law and jurisdiction. One such instance came in 1792 in Hayburn's Case.

if a judge on coming to the bench were to decide to seal himself off hermetically from all manifestations of public opinion, he would accomplish very little; he would not be influenced by current public opinion, but instead would be influenced by the state of public opinion at the time he came to the bench.

wrote Justice Wilson. Not surprisingly, the states were alarmed by this development, and a constitutional amendment to overrule the decision was introduced two days later. In 1798, the Eleventh Amendment received final ratification, providing that the jurisdiction of the federal courts "shall not be construed to extend" to cases brought by citizens of one state against another state.

In addition to institutional embarrassment in many quarters, there was a particular irony to this failure of information. The Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence depends to a considerable measure on the justices' assessment of public opinion as reflected in statutes. A punishment that is demonstrably "unusual" is deemed constitutionally problematic.