Quotes About Justice

If we look to people who make no mistakes, who were always on the right side, who never apologized for tyrants or unjust wars, we shall have few heroes and heroines

In late twentieth-century America, this "jurisprudence of lawlessness" is a bit out of (fate. While there is a vigorous victim-rights movement in our nation'' and increasingly strong compassion for the victims of rape,7 the day is long since past when rapists are routinely lynched as in Kernan's time. The killing of the seducer of a virgin is no longer it common occurrence, and unapologetic traducers of women stand in little danger of being shot.

Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.

Whoever imagined that ours was a government of laws and not men

My pro-life colleagues love them till they're born but don't mind a righteous execution afterward.

a Supreme Court which is careless of the law can diminish respect for law. But there are clearly times when what might have been acceptable to Thomas Jefferson becomes unacceptable to us, and whether in 1954 Jefferson might have made Sally Hemings drink at the water fountain marked 'Coloreds Only' becomes irrelevant. At best.

In his nearly twenty-five years as Chief Justice, Roger Bannon never once voted to overturn a death sentence. But what truly distinguished him was a driving lack of curiosity as to whether any of these defendants were, in fact, innocent.

It won't be easy, given that some courts have ruled that even sleeping through your client's trial is not enough to qualify.

What she was hearing, Caroline knew, was a lifetime of frustration and moral passion, based on a single, diamond-hard belief: that the death penalty was tainted by human failings too profound to cure, and that imposing it was an act of arrogance which diminished our humanity.

The notion that James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights so that racists and sociopaths and madmen could slaughter innocent men, women, and children with assault weapons or handguns is one of the most contemptible notions that an irresponsible minority has ever crammed down the throats of its potential victims.

I'm fighting now only for individual captive dolphins and dolphins in general but also for people, for the mind and sensibilities of future generations toward the world itself.

Magna est veritas, et praevalebit: truth is mighty, and will prevail

My mother always said that if you do the right thing, the universe comes to your aid

Nothing is more excruciating than waiting for the jury's verdict. Except, perhaps, hearing the jury's verdict.

All that's required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

Why is it that good always has to fight an uphill battle?" I thought for a moment, then said, "I don't know. Maybe that's the point. Good things are higher up.

The Golden Rule is a two-edged sword. If some of us treated others as we treat ourselves, we would be jailed.

The problem with sin is that, if you have a conscience, you pay whether you're caught or not. Charles James's Diary

Righteous indignation is the alibi of mobs and murderers.

It's been written that, He who does not forgive is guilty of the greater sin. That verse had always confounded me. I had considered it unjust at best and cruel at worst. But these words were not meant as condemnation—rather as illumination of an eternal truth: that to not extend forgiveness is to burn the bridge that we ourselves must cross.

No. I mean, if I were going by the book, I should have cited him, but sometimes you got to go by the spirit of the law. He fought for our country.

The problem with sin is that, if you have a conscience, you pay whether you're caught or not.

Pour que le mal triomphe, il suffit que les gens bien ne fassent rien.

Ostin suddenly nodded. "Oh, I get it. It's payback. Let her stew in her own juices. Awesome.