Law Courts Quotes

• Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Pigs, Law, Machines

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2450, Delphi Classics

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• Justice is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don't believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodation concretely.

  Learned Hand

  Believe, Justice, Royal

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• At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Lying, Government, Law

  "Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 477". Dissenting opinion, 1921.

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• The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Life, Law, Logic

  The Common Law Lecture 1 (1881).

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• The makers of our Constitution . . . conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Men, Rights, Liberty

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928) See Brandeis 1

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• It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.

  John Marshall

  Law, Judicial Review, Court

  Marbury v. Madison (1803)

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• The Supreme Court of the United States is an institution damned by God Almighty.

  Jimmy Swaggart

  Religious, Court Judges, Scary

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• Crime is contagious....if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  War, Government, Law

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Government, Giving

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.18, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Inspirational, Acceptance

  1962 Speech at Cornell College, Mt Vernon, Iowa. Reported in the Wall Street Journal, 13 Nov.

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• Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Change, Men, Law

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• There is no such thing as justice - in or out of court.

  Clarence Darrow

  Revenge, Justice, Ears

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 19 Apr. 1936

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• It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

  Edmund Burke

  Law, Justice, Humanity

  "On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies," 22 Mar. 1775

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• To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Mean, Government, Order

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Peace, Freedom, War

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Government, Libertarian Party, Security And Freedom

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.

  Alexander Herzen

  Passion, Law, Facts

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• Every man is his own law court and punishes himself enough.

  Patricia Highsmith

  Men, Law, Crime

  Patricia Highsmith (2001). “Strangers on a Train”, p.252, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion... peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means - by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspections... It should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Art, Real, Mean

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• Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Law, Evil, World

  Leo Tolstoy, J. M. Packham (2015). “Leo Tolstoy: Letters and Papers”, p.99, Lulu Press, Inc

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• TV taste is an aftertaste. Whatever gets on the tube is always a foregone conclusion, a fait accompli. That is, any new ideas or social changes have already been fought for in the real world of the streets, or in the bedroom or even the law courts long before they reach the screen. By the time you see it on prime time, it's usually all over and done with, whatever it was. Television by definition is not avant garde. It is often reactionary and always sentimental.

  Jennifer Stone

  Real, Ideas, Long

  Jennifer Stone (1988). “Mind Over Media: Essays on Film and Television”

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• The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and
  money began to play an important part in determining
  elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to
  the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the
  Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors

  Plutarch

  Army, Play, Abuse

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• As a citizen and someone who was a judge on the constitutional law court for 18 years, I feel whenever I can raise my voice with the hope of being heard I need to do it, but I wouldn't assign a special wisdom and responsibility to writers.

  Bernhard Schlink

  Responsibility, Years, Law

  "Bernhard Schlink: being German is a huge burden" by Kate Connolly, www.theguardian.com. September 16, 2012.

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• It may be that for a long time some nations will continue to fight each other, but the example of those nations who prefer arbitration to war, law courts to the battlefield, must sooner or later influence the belligerent powers and make war as unpopular as pugilism is now.

  Randal Cremer

  War, Fighting, Law

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• The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

  Denis Diderot

  Running, Law, Long

  "Selected Writings". Book by Lester G. Crocker, 1966.

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