"The more laws and order are made prominent,
The more thieves and robbers there will be."
- Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
* * *
"The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws."
- Cornelius Tacitus, Annals, 2nd c.
* * *
"Where you find the laws most numerous, there you will find also the greatest injustice."
- Arcesilaus
* * *
"What power has law where only money rules."
- Gaius Petronius
* * *
"The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it,
or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it."
- Bertolt Brecht
***
"Ignorance of the law excuses no man: Not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him."
- John Selden
* * *
"It takes a very long time to learn that a courtroom is the last place in the world for learning the truth."
- Alice Koller
***
"The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept."
- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2 scene 2
* * *
"Laws are like spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it,
but large things break through and escape."
- Solon
***
"Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government."
- Pierre Joseph Proudhon quoted in The Match!
* * *
"The Law locks up the hapless felon who steals the goose from off the common,
but lets the greater felon loose who steals the common from the goose."
- Anonymous
* * *
"A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns."
- Mario Puzo
* * *
"Fighting crime by building more jails is like fighting cancer by building more cemeteries."
- Paul Kelly, New Party representative (Little Rock, AR)
* * *
"Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had been complaining about the
ineffciency of the police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate. 'The
law of England and of this country,' he wrote, 'has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen
and constables than it confers on every citizen.' State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so steadily
that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it."
- Albert J. Nock, Our Enemy, the State, 1935
* * *
"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery."
- Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
* * *
"Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws."
- Sir Richard Francis Burton
* * *
"I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law."
- Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
* * *
"All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind."
- William Congreve
* * *
"Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population."
- Albert Einstein
* * *
"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice."
- Montesquieu, 1742
* * *
"Bad law is the worst sort of tyranny."
- Edmund Burke
* * *
"Law is order, and good law is good order."
- Aristotle, Politics
* * *
"Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered."
- Aristotle, Politics
* * *
"The people's good is the highest law."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Legibus
* * *
"Our problems of discrimination can never be cured by laws alone; but I would be the first to agree that
laws can help - laws carefully considered and weighed in an atmosphere of dispassion, in the absence of political demagoguery,
and in the light of fundamental constitutional principles. ...
To be sure, a calm environment for the consideration of any law dealing with human relationships is not easily attained -
emotions run high, political pressures become great, and objectivity is at a premium. Nevertheless,
deliberation and calmness are indispensable to success."
- Barry Goldwater, Where I Stand
* * *
"The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law."
- Aristotle
* * *
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
- Anatole France, The Red Lily, 1894
* * *
"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken."
- Benjamin Disraeli
* * *
"Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it."
- Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourse upon the First Ten Books of Livy
* * *
"Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made. The less people know about how sausages and laws are made
the better they'll sleep at night."
- Otto von Bismark
* * *
"My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones
that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not
attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible."
- Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative (1964)
* * *
"Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed."
- Abraham Lincoln
* * *
"A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers."
- H. L. Mencken
* * *
"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."
- Robert Frost
* * *
"A lawyer starts life giving $500 worth of law for $5 and ends giving $5 worth for $500."
- Benjamin H. Brewster
* * *
"Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
* * *
"Layers who get caught lying... whether in written statements or testimony, get disbarred. I love the president and I love
his lawyers, but the arguement that disbarment isn't standard fare is not correct. In fact it's baloney."
- Mark W. Foster, an attorney who headed Washington D.C.'s ethics panel
* * *
"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."
- Abraham Lincoln
* * *
"Go not for every grief to the physician, nor for every quarrel to the lawyer, nor for every thirst to the pot."
- George Herbert
* * *
"If it weren't for my lawyer, I'd still be in prison. It went a lot faster with two people digging."
- Joe Martin, Mister Boffo
* * *
"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced."
- Frank Zappa
* * *
"The moment that the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not
a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."
- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitution of the United States Against the Attacks of M. Turgot, 1787-1788
* * *
"It is best that laws should be so constructed as to leave as little as possible to the decision of those who judge."
- Aristotle, Rhetoric, I
* * *
"Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government."
- Aristotle, Politics
* * *
"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and
there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or smooth, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a
constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to
our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they support them, or they totally destroy them."
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
* * *
"The more laws, the less justice."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis, 44 B.C.
* * *
"[W]hen it comes to the lawless, politicians do nothing but huff and puff about crime, and pass yet more laws that disarm
the law-abiding and pry into our lives."
- Robert Corbin, American Rifleman, June 1993
* * *
"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the
most erroneous and mistaken policy."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1774
* * *
"There are four kinds of law in America: (1) The Federal Constitution. (2) Federal Statutes.
(3) State Constitutions. (4) State Statutes. The Federal Constitution is the "supreme law,"
and all other forms of law must be in harmony therewith. If two laws conflict,
not the later but the higher prevails; the lower authority must give way. the Court in interpreting
the law merely states what the higher law requires and shows wherein the lower law is inconsistent
with this. The judges must regulate their decisions by the fundemental laws rather than by those that
are not fundemental. It is the law, not the will of the judges, that prevails. The will, or opinion,
of the judge should have nothing to do with the case. He may think one law is good and another bad:
as a judge he is bound to allow only that one to stand which is in harmony with the Constitution. If
he be guided, not by the law but by his personal interests or his political views, he is unfit for
his place, and a decision inspired by such motives will arouse popular displeasure and distrust. If
the case were flagrant and odious it might provoke resistance and cause the Court to become the object
of public and political attack.
"The Court has generally sought to avoid politics, and it has been strong just in proportion as it has
succeeded. Yet it has not always been able to keep itself above political discussion and free from
party strife and conflict. Jay's decision in the famous case of Chisholm vs. Georgia aroused the
adherents of State's rights and they demanded the Eleventh Amendment. The Federalists on the eve of
their retirement in 1800 sought to enlarge the scope of the Judiciary and to provide some Federalist
appointments and John Adams' "midnight judges" aroused party criticism and opposition. The Jeffersonian
Republicans, when they came into power, not being able to remove the Federalist judges from office
nor reduce their compenstation, abolished the courts by repealing the law that created them. It being
unconstitutional to remove the judge from the office, they removed the office from the judge. Marshall's
nationalizing decisions aroused the opposition of the States' Rights school, and the bank decisions
of the Court aroused local political opposition in some of the States. In 1857. the most serious
introduction of the Court into the areana of politics occured by the Dred Scott decision. The chief
political issue between parties at that time was as to whether or not Congress should prohibit slavery
in the Territories. The Republican party had come into being primarily upon the demand that slavery
should be prevented by national power from entering the Territories. In deciding the Dred Scott case
and remanding Dred to slavery, which the Court might have done merely by the application of Missouri
law, the Court went aside to give it's opinions upon the controverted political questions of the day.
If the opinion of the Court were to be taken as a guide in the politics of the country, the Republican
party had no longer any reason for existence. The Republican leaders, Sumner, Stevens, Lincoln, and
others, denounced the decision as partisan, Lincoln and Seward going so far as to accuse the venerable
Chief Justice and President Buchanan of collusion in the preparation of the decision. The Republican
party still pursued the political course that had been condemned by the Court, and the only injury was
to the Court itself. The Republican party, as a party, denounced the decision as "a dangerous political
heresy, revolutionary in it's tendency and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country." The
Republicans came into power denouncing the Supreme Court and repudiating it's decision.
"The "greenback" decisions of the Court have also aroused political opposition. Whether Congress should
issue legal-tender notes to be used as money, as bank-notes are, is a public financial question to be
determined by the polical department of the Government. Politically the country is greatly divided upon
this question. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the constitutional power of Congress to do this.
The Court first decided (1870) that this power did not rest with Congress. But th Court was soon changed
in it's personel by the creation of a new justiceship and by the filling of a vacancy, and a new case
was gotten up. The opinion of the two new judges was already known from their having passed similar
cases in the lower courts, and when the new decision came the majority of the judges held that Congress,
in the exercise of war power, might issue legal-tender notes. Later, in 1884, in still another case,
the Court held, with only one dissenting voice, that this power rests with Congress in time of peace
as well as in time of war. This decision is thought to be dangerous by some whose political and
financial opinions were offended by it.
"Previous to the campaign of 1896, the Populist party and many Democratic convetions in the States
demanded a national Income Tax, and, in 1894, a Democratic Congress passed such a tax. The Supreme
Court, by a vote of five to four, one judge having changed his mind, declared it unconstitutional and
set it aside, thus reversing previous decisions on the subject. This offended the Democrats, and in
1896 the Democratic Convention, like the Republicans in 1860. denounced the decision, saying that it
was contrary to "the uniform decisions of that Court for nearly one hundred years," the Court having
sustained objections to the law "which had been previously overruled by the ablest judges who have
ever sat on that bench." The Democrats also denounced "government by injunction as a new and highly
dangerous form of oppression by which Federal judges, in contempt of the law of the States and rights
of citizens, become at once legislators, judges, and executioners."
"The reversal of the Supreme Court's decision in the legal-tender cases revealed the weak point in it's
organization. It is within the power of Congress and the President to "pack" the Court, if they have a
mind to do so. The number of Court can be increased from nine to fifteen, or to any other convenient
number. If Congress and the President are determined to do what the Court asserts to be unconstitutional
they have only to reorganize the Court by increasing the membership and by filling up the court with
judges who will give the desired opinion. If the opinions of the President's new appointees to the
Court can be known in advance, almast any case that it is desired to have reversed could be reversed
in this way. This would of course impair the usefulness of the Court, and while this manner of controlling
it by political legislation is possible it is hardly probable. The respect of the Americans for law and
for this their highest legal tribunal may be depended upon to restrain action in this direction. There
should be some way by which the sovereign will of the people can work out it's purposes, even against
the obstacles of court decisions. The Court must be, in the last resort, amenable to the will of the
people.
"As national judges may declare a State law unconstitutional, so may a State judge declare a national
law unconstitutional. He may be overruled in this decision by a national court on appeal, but if a
State ciruit judge, or even a justice of the peace, finds a national law in his way in the trial of a
case and if, in his judgement, the law is unconstitutional, it is his right, or rather his duty, to
say so. If he does not judge aright there is a chance for a higher court to say so.
- James Albert Woodburn, The American Republic and Its Government, 1903
* * *
"... no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they
are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more."
- Mark Twain, The Gilded Age
* * *
"... the administration of the law can never go lax where every individual sees to it that it grows not lax in his
own case, or in cases which fall under his eyes."
- Mark Twain's Notebook
* * *
"Those people ... early stricken of God, intellectually - the departmental interpreters of the laws in Washington ... can
always be depeneded on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it."
- Mark Twain, Unmailed letter to H.C. Christiancy, December 18, 1887
* * *
"Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity."
- Mark Twain, A New Crime
* * *
"The laws of Nature, that is to say the laws of God, plainly made every human being a law unto himself, we
must steadfastly refuse to obey those laws, and we must as steadfastly stand by the conventions which ignore
them, since the statutes furnish us peace, fairly good government, and stability, and therefore are better for
us than the laws of God, which would soon plunge us into confusion and disorder and anarchy if we should adopt them."
- Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption
* * *
"In this topsy-turvy, crazy, illogical world, Man has made laws for himself. He has fenced himself round with them,
mainly with the idea of keeping communities together, and gain for the strongest. No woman was consulted in the making of
laws. And nine-tenths of the people who are daily obeying - or fighting against - Nature's laws, have no real opinion.
Opinion means deduction, after weighing the matter, and deep though upon it. They simply echo feeling,
because for generations forebearers have laid something down as an axiom. They do not investigate of weigh
for themselves. The axiom of the forebearers was, 'It is immoral to follow God's law, unless bound by man's law
and a wedding ring.' "
- Mark Twain, quoted in Mark Twain on Three Weeks, Elinor Glyn
* * *
"You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws: by words, not by effects.
They take a meaning, and get to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself."
- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
* * *
"I believe you keep a lawyer. I have always kept a lawyer, too, though I have never made anything out of him.
It is a service to an author to have a lawyer. There is something so disagreeable in having a personal contact
with a publisher. So it is better to work through a lawyer - and lose your case."
- Mark Twain, Author's Club Speech
* * *
"To succeed in other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do."
- Mark Twain, Following the Equator
* * *
"They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a
man's heirs ain't got any right to his property."
- Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass letter, Keokuk Saturday Post, November 1, 1856
* * *
"Heaven knows insanity was disreputable enough, long ago; but now that the lawyers have got to cutting every gallows
rope and picking every prison lock with it, it has become a sneaking villainy that ought to hang and keep on
hanging its sudden possessors until evil-doers should conclude that the safest plan was to never claim to have
it until they came by it legitimately. The very calibre of the people the lawyers most frequently try to save
by the insanity subterfuge ought to laugh the plea out of the courts, one would think."
- Mark Twain, "Unburlesquable Thing," The Galaxy Magazine, July 1870
* * *
"Lawyers are like other people - fools on the average; but it is easier for an ass to succeed in that trade than any other."
- Mark Twain, quoted in Sam Clemens on Hannibal, Dixon Wecter
* * *
"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by
the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."
- Mark Twain, speech, July 4, 1873
* * *
"Our admirable jury system enabled the persecuted ex-officials to secure a jury of nine gentlemen from
a neighboring asylum and three graduates from Sing Sing, and presently they walked forth with characters
vindicated."
- Mark Twain, The Gilded Age
* * *
"The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ingorance, stupidity and
perjury. It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years
ago. ... I desire to tamper with the jury law.. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence
and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers.
But no doubt I shall be defeated - every effort I make to save the country 'misses fire.' "
- Mark Twain, Roughing It
* * *
"On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic,
shot himself through the body, cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his neck -
and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with intelligence unblinded by its sorrow, brought
in a verdict of death 'by the visitation of God.' What could the world do without juries?"
- Mark Twain, Roughing It
* * *
"The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the
system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that
by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and
perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion."
- Mark Twain, "Foster's Case," New York Tribune, March 10, 1873
* * *
"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has a better lawyer."
- Robert Frost
* * *
"They call it the Halls of Justice because the only place you get justice is in the halls."
- Lenny Bruce
* * *
"The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer."
- Will Rogers
* * *
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."
- Henry Kissinger
* * *
"This provision speaks for itself. Its plain object is to secure the perfect enjoyment of that great right of the common
law, that a man's house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion."
- Justice Joseph Story, 1833
* * *
"Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them."
- William s. Burroughs
* * *
"Criminal lawyer. Or is that redundant?"
- Will Durst
* * *
Judge: Are you trying to show contempt for this court?
Mae West: I was doin' my best to hide it.
* * *
"Members of society must obey the law because they personally believe that its commands are justified."
- Judge David Bazelon, Questioning Authority
* * *
"It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent of moral or clean or upright."
- Murray Rothbard
* * *
"Petty laws breed great crimes."
- Ouida, 1880
* * *
"Judges ... rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times."
- Justice Warren E. Burger
* * *
"There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people."
- Hubert H. Humphrey
* * *
"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.
* * *
"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment
in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for
the law."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
* * *
"Good men must not obey the laws too well."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series, "Politics," 1844
* * *
"When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the
sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind."
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835
* * *
"Mr. Murdoch, in his History of English Reform, reviews the legislation of England from 1688 to 1810. He recites
upon his pages sixty-three statutes for the protection of a landed aristocracy, where there was a dismal void of laws for
the protection of the masses of men. Laws to protect creditors and landlords, restrictive corn-laws, laws against
combinations of workmen, compelling journeyman tailors to work for fixed wages, prohibiting public meetings of laborers,
protecting game preserves, ejecting tenants, freeing peers from imprisonment, providing prisons for artisans and laborers,
providing seven years' transportation for injuring young shrubs and plants in the night, - these are typical specimens of
the legislation of a century in which it may be said that it was not the enactment, but the administration, in which
despotism was chiefly felt. Punishments were merciless, pitiless, and cruel. From a study of that legislation and its
administration, Murdoch is led to remark that the rule of classes was 'severe, selfish, systematically suppressive.'
"'The treatment of the people,' he says, 'was perhaps worse than that under the most despotic of the monarchs, for it was
tyranny under the sanction of law, and was upheld by a mixture of superior knowledge and military power. The final picture
to look at was a nation great and wealthy and luxurious, and another nation poverty-stricken, ignorant and debased, both
living side by side in the same island, the one the governors, the other the governed.'"
- James Albert Woodburn, The American Republic and Its Government, 1903
* * *
"The law has lost its characteristics as a legal reference that concerns equality, justice and peaceful settlements of
conflicts. It has become a means of repression, exploitation, nepotism and political vengeance."
- Antoine Messarra, "General Theory on the Lebanese Constitutional Regime" 2004
* * *
If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is
contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence … and the courts must abide by that decision."
– US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006
* * *
"The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the
judge."
– U.S. vs. Dougherty, 1972
* * *
"The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."
– John Jay, co-author of the Federalist Papers and first U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice
* * *
The higher entry standards imposed by licensing laws reduce the supply of professional services … The poor are the net
losers, because the availability of low-cost service has been reduced. In essence, the poor subsidize the information
research costs of the rich."
– S. David Young
* * *
"The proper direction of man's thought is not toward the creation of new laws for government, but toward the acceptance
of every person's moral dignity."
– Edmund Yates
* * *
" If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers,
the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected – those, precisely, who need the
law's protection most! – and listens to their testimony."
– James Baldwin, African-American Author, "No Name in the Street"
* * *
"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt."
– Elizabeth Cady Stanton
* * *
"Each and every time someone says 'there ought to be a law' they are saying that men with guns should enforce their will
on innocent others."
– Michael Barnett
* * *
"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."
– Thomas Jefferson
* * *
