Quotes · Skopia

12 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Person·Louis Brandeis✕clear

Instead of holding a position of independence, between the wealthy and the people, prepared to curb the excesses of either, able lawyers have, to a large extent, allowed themselves to become adjuncts of great corporations and have neglected the obligation to use their powers for the protection of the people. We hear much of the "corporation lawyer," and far too little of the "people's lawyer."

1905

★ 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.

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.

Whitney v. California · 1927

★ 1.8

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.

The Right to Privacy · 1890

★ 1.9

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

If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.

Jay Burns Baking Co. vs. Bryan · 1924

★ 1.9

Is there not a casual connection between the development of these huge, indomitable trusts and the horrible crimes now under investigation?... Is it not irony to speak of the equality of opportunity in a country cursed with their bigness?

1911

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Whitney v. California · 1927

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The Court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function.

Burnet v. Coronado Oil and Gas Co. · 1932

★ 3.5

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

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann · 1932

★ 3.5

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

They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

Olmstead v. United States · 1928

★ 3.5

Essay · Magazine

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

1913

★ 6.9

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

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

Olmstead v. United States · 1928

★ 6.9