Quotes · Skopia

53 quotes

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched... Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Thomas Jefferson

1816

★ 6.2

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is... If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each... This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

John Marshall

Marbury v. Madison · 1803

★ 5.4

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

They are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.

Roger B. Taney

Dred Scott v. Sandford · 1857

★ 5.4

Treatise · Legal writing

The king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness.

William Blackstone

Commentaries on the Laws of England · 1765

★ 5.3

Legal opinion · Legal writing

The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose

Edward Coke

Semayne's Case · 1603

★ 5.2

Lecture

The law must be stable, and yet it cannot stand still.

Roscoe Pound

1921

★ 5.2

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 confute him.

John Selden

Table Talk (Selden) · 1689

★ 5.1

Speech · Political speech

Laws are silent in time of war.

Cicero

Pro Milone · 52 BC

★ 4.8

Travel writing

A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.

Samuel Johnson

James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides · 1773

★ 4.4

Legal opinion · Legal writing

To establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.

Nicholas Conyngham Tindal

M'Naghten's Case · 1843

★ 4.3

It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

1897

★ 4.3

Sermon · Religious literature

Whoever hath an absolute authority to interpret any written, or spoken laws; it is He, who is truly the Law-giver to all intents and purposes, and not the Person who first wrote, or spoke them.

Benjamin Hoadly

1717

★ 4.2

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Aristotle

Politics · 350 BC

★ 4.0

Philosophical literature

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.9

Open letter · Letter · Political literature

There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letter from Birmingham Jail · 1963

★ 3.9

Epigram

The judge is condemned when the guilty party is acquitted.

Publilius Syrus

Sententiae · 43 BC

★ 3.8

Epigram

No one should be judge in his own case.

Publilius Syrus

Sententiae · 43 BC

★ 3.8

Essay · Political literature

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 78 · 1788

★ 3.8

Speech · Political speech

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

Ulysses S. Grant

First Inaugural Address of Ulysses S. Grant · 1869

★ 3.8

Historical literature

Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.

Edward Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · 1776

★ 3.7

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