Law Quotes

And what hypocrisy it is on the part of our Government to have the Bible in our courts of law for the culprit to take his oath upon and then be tried for the very crimes which the Bible itself sanctions.

~ Joseph Lewis

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

~ John Adams

Justice? -- You get justice in the next world. In this one you have the law.

~ William Gaddis

Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.

~ Thomas Paine

The Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

~ John Marshall

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Vice may triumph for a time, crime may flaunt its victories in the face of honest toilers, but in the end the law will follow the wrong-doer to a bitter fate, and dishonor and punishment will be the portion of those who sin.

~ Allan Pinkerton

The rape of justice anywhere ,violates justice everywhere

~ Colin Tegerdine

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

~ Thomas Jefferson

True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has developed with mankind ... If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?

~ Walter Van Tilburg Clark

The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him.

~ John Marshall

I once fed a dog-fight operator to the dogs he had abused for so long, and do you want to know something? It felt so good. It was justice, girl. The fucking law never gave a shit about a victim, but justice is all heart.

~ Cedric Nye

We may indeed in counsel point to the higher road, but we cannot compel any free creature to walk upon it. That leadeth to tyranny, which disfigureth good and maketh it seem hateful.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Earlier in [2007] the [Prime Minister's Office] had also drawn criticism for trying to muzzle the judiciary. The reproach came from Antonio Lamer, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court....'I must say I was taken aback,' said Lamer, who sat on the Supreme Court for twenty years. 'The prime minister is going the wrong route as regards the independence of the judiciary. He's trying to interfere with the sentencing process.

~ Lawrence Martin

For every crime that comes before him, a judge is required to complete a perfect syllogism in which the major premise must be the general law; the minor, the action that conforms or does not conform to the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment. If the judge were constrained, or if he desired to frame even a single additional syllogism, the door would thereby be opened to uncertainty.

~ Cesare Beccaria

It is a considerable point in all good legislation to determine exactly the credibility of witnesses and the proofs of a crime. Every reasonable man, everyone, that is, whose ideas have a certain interconnection and whose feelings accord with those of other men, may be a witness. The true measure of his credibility is nothing other than his interest in telling or not telling the truth; for this reason it is frivolous to insist that women are too weak [to be good witnesses], childish to insist that civil death in a condemned man has the same effects as a real death, and meaningless to insist on the infamy of the infamous, when they have no interest in lying.

~ Cesare Beccaria

But even when the principle of equal treatment was betrayed, American leaders in every era have emphatically affirmed it, not so much out of hypocrisy as out of aspiration. Indeed, for those who were devoted to justice, the persistence of inequality was precisely what made equality before the law so imperative.

~ Glenn Greenwald

Justice? -You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

~ William Gaddis

A basic principle of American justice holds that a bad man has the same rights as a good man.

~ Massad Ayoob

Everything in life has a yin and yang – an interconnected, complementary and opposite force. Just as we need the light to distinguish it from the dark, we recognize injustice in the world demands justice to provide a balance.

~ Kenneth Eade

There will always be cases that cry out to me for ultimate punishment. That is not the true issue. The pivotal question instead is whether a system of justice can be constructed that reaches only the rare, right cases, without also occasionally condemning the innocent or the undeserving.

~ Scott Turow

Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way if justice.

~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.

~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Never let the law interfere with justice.

~ James Hickey

As a society, we adhere to the belief in a fair trial for a person accused of a serious crime, but some of us struggle when it comes to the business of providing a competent lawyer to guarantee said fair trial. Lawyers like me live with the question “But how do you represent such scum?”I offer a quick “Someone has to” as I walk away.Do we really want fair trials? No, we do not. We want justice, and quickly. And justice is whatever we deem it to be on a case-by-case basis.It’s just as well that we don’t believe in fair trials because we damned sure don’t have them. The presumption of innocence is now the presumption of guilt. The burden of proof is a travesty because the proof is often lies. Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt means if he probably did it, then let’s get him off the streets.

~ John Grisham

Law is for everyone, justice is for few.

~ Sercan Leylek

Law and justice are not the same.

~ John Connolly

If changing judges changes law, then it is not clear what law is.

~ Judge Richard A. Posner

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

~ Benjamin Franklin

To be just, a law has to be flexible.

~ Gloria Steinem

One reason current discussions of justice are so impoverished is that our heterogeneous society does not have many shared texts. Shakespeare's plays are among the few secular texts that remain common enough and complex enough to sustain these conversation. His answers to our dilemmas may not bear on all points. Yet they teach us not to underestimate the action of the flower.

~ Kenji Yoshino

Fair has nothing to do with it. This is the law – it has nothing to do with justice.

~ Kenneth Eade

Fair is irrelevant. This is the law – it has nothing to do with justice.

~ Kenneth Eade

The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions -- knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas -- become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use.~Louis D. Brandeis

~ Louis D. Brandeis

I don't see any reason to let law interfere with justice around here. We never did before.

~ Sid Fleischman

Karma and manifestation work 24/7 to balance the scales. Do justice, in due time.

~ T.f. Hodge

When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now

~ Arthur Miller

. . . for men felt therein the presence of that great human thing which is called law, and that great divine thing which is called justice.

~ Victor Hugo