Quotes · Skopia

97 quotes

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

William J. Brennan, Jr.

New York Times Company v. Sullivan · 1964

★ 1.0

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Dissenting opinion · Legal writing

Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.

Antonin Scalia

Morrison v. Olsen · 1988

★ 1.0

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Dissenting opinion · Legal writing

Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

John Paul Stevens

Bush v. Gore · 2000

★ 1.0

Treatise · Legal writing

In all tyrannical governments, the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.

William Blackstone

Commentaries on the Laws of England · 1769

★ 1.1

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis.

Thurgood Marshall

Furman v. Georgia · 1972

★ 1.2

Legal opinion · Legal writing

A long line of cases shows that it is not merely of some importance, but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.

Gordon Hewart

Rex v. Sussex Justices · 1924

★ 1.7

Legal writing

No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning. For every constitution, there is an epic, for each decalogue a scripture. Once understood in the context of the narratives that give it meaning, law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which we live.

Robert M. Cover

Nomos and Narrative · 1983

★ 1.7

Legal opinion · Legal writing

Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between tire two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government.

Learned Hand

Masses Pub Co. v. Patten · 1917

★ 1.8

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Schenck v. United States · 1919

★ 1.8

Legal opinion · Legal writing

Our procedure has been always haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream. What we need to fear is the archaic formalism and the watery sentiment that obstructs, delays, and defeats the prosecution of crime.

Learned Hand

United States v. Garsson · 1923

★ 1.8

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.

Louis Brandeis

Whitney v. California · 1927

★ 1.8

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Louis Brandeis

Whitney v. California · 1927

★ 1.8

Legal opinion · Legal writing

Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury.

Learned Hand

Helvering v. Gregory · 1934

★ 1.8

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Immunities that are valid as against the federal government by force of the specific pledges of particular amendments have been found to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, and thus, through the Fourteenth Amendment, become valid as against the states.

Benjamin Cardozo

Palko v. Connecticut · 1937

★ 1.8

Legal opinion · Legal writing

Right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and will always be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all.

Learned Hand

United States v. Associated Press · 1943

★ 1.8

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination...rationalized by an attitude of "romantic paternalism" which, in practical effect, put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

William J. Brennan, Jr.

Frontiero v. Richardson · 1973

★ 1.8

Treatise · Legal writing

Reason is the life of the law, nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason.

Edward Coke

1628

★ 1.9

Treatise · Legal writing

How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law.

Edward Coke

1628

★ 1.9

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The Cherokee nation...is a distinct community, occupying its own territory...which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves, or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress.

John Marshall

Worcester v. Georgia · 1832

★ 1.9

Legal writing

Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the demands of society... Now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, — the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term "property" has grown to comprise every possession — intangible, as well as tangible.

Louis Brandeis

The Right to Privacy · 1890

★ 1.9

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