Quotes & Sayings About Case Law

For the law, the clarity of language and the finality of judgment is crucial, because you have to decide a case one way or another - whether it is criminal or civil or whatever. In ordinary life, you do not have to decide things with absolute finality. You do not have to decide on a theory in order to behave in a certain way towards other people. — Talal Asad

Reflect on the "I" which can grasp all this. If the "I' can grasp the idea of the universe and its laws, then that "I" stands above all other things, stands aside from all other things, judges them, fathoms them. In that case, the "I" is not only liberated from earthly axioms, the earthly laws, but has its own law, which transcends the earthly. Now, whence comes that law? Certainly not from earth, where all reaches its issue, and vanishes beyond recall. Is that no indication of immortality? If there were no personal immortality, would you be worrying yourself about it, be searching for an answer? ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Samson crushed himself and his enemies to death beneath the ruins of a building. He can only be excused on the grounds that the Spirit of the Lord, who wrought miracles through him, had bidden him to do so. But, apart from such men excepted by the command of a just law in general or of God, the very Source of justice, in a special case, any one who kills a human being, himself or another, is guilty of murder. — Saint Augustine

First of all, let me give my comments on the blasphemy law. This law was introduced by the military dictator General Ziaul Haq. No one demanded the blasphemy law in Pakistan. But he wanted to give protection to his undemocratic rule, dictatorship, by using religion. So Pakistan came into being in 1947, and from 1947 until 1986 no case against any minorities was registered under the protection of the blasphemy law. Nobody from minorities was killed and no act of violence happened [against them]. — Shahbaz Bhatti

Courts of equity make their decrees so as to arrive at the justice of the case without violating the rules of law. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Laura also thought that the law had done a great deal to spoil Henry. It had changed his natural sturdy stupidity into a browbeating indifference to other people's point of view. He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to every one who supported a better case than he. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known. — Thomas Jefferson

Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason. — John Powell

I used to say that, as Solicitor General, I made three arguments of every case. First came the one that I planned-as I thought, logical, coherent, complete. Second was the one actually presented-interrupted, incoherent, disjointed, disappointing. The third was the utterly devastating argument that I thought of after going to bed that night. — Robert H. Jackson

Barabbas ("Son of the Father") is a kind of Messianic figure. Two interpretations of Messianic hope are juxtaposed here in the offer of the Passover amnesty. In terms of Roman law, it is a case of two criminals convicted of the same offense - two rebels against the Pax Romana. It is clear that Pilate prefers the nonviolent "fanatic" that he sees in Jesus. Yet the crowd and the Temple authorities have different categories. If the Temple aristocracy felt constrained to declare: "We have no king but Caesar" (Jn 19:15), this only appears to be a renunciation of Israel's Messianic hope: "We do not want this king" is what they mean. They would like to see a different solution to the problem. Again and again, mankind will be faced with this same choice: to say yes to the God who works only through the power of truth and love, or to build on something tangible and concrete - on violence. Jesus — Pope Benedict XVI

I dared not trust the case on the presumption that the court knows everything. In fact, I argued it on the presumption that the court didn't know anything. — Abraham Lincoln

The child is more individualised than the adult, the patient more than the healthy man, the madman and the delinquent more than the normal and the non-delinquent. In each case, it is towards the first of these pairs that all the individualising mechanisms are turned in our civilisation and when one wishes to individualise the healthy, normal and law-abiding adult, it is always by asking him how much of the child he has in him, what secret madness lies within him, what fundamental crime he has dreamt of committing — FOUCAULT MICHEL

Professionalism in law has brought us the O.J. Simpson case in lieu of justice. — Bill James

I always liked performing. I always liked being in front of people. That's one of the things I loved about law; we had mock trials, and I got to go up and state my case. But I took an acting class, and after my first class, I was hooked. — Ashley Greene

The masses will not vote for their own upliftment in a higher order of society. This has to be accomplished without their support and request, despite them and indeed against them. It is absurd to pivot your whole project, as does a conventional party, on the submission of change to the decision of those who so need to be changed. You might as well make the case for law and order conditional on the approval of the criminals. — Colin Jordan

Hate lawyers all you want. Unlike you, we'll never be replaced with robots. Case closed! — Natalya Vorobyova

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

he later made the tobacco companies pay: over $200 billion to Mississippi and forty-five other states as compensation for Medicaid costs arising from tobacco-related illnesses. The case (immortalized in the film The Insider) made Scruggs a rich man. His fee in the tobacco class action is said to have been $1.4 billion, or $22,500 for every hour his law firm worked. — Niall Ferguson

The negative penalties of the Old Testament case laws were not harsh but just, not a threat to society but rather the necessary judicial foundation of civic freedom ... the Old Testament was harsh on criminals because it was soft on victims. — Gary North

The complete reverse was so often the case that he had come to think of it as a kind of natural law. — Terry Pratchett

What are man and woman if not members of two very different and warring tribes Yet decade after decade, century after century, they attempt in marriage to reconcile and forge a union. Why I don't know. Biological imperative Divine law Or just a desire to connect to that mysterious other In any case, it's always struck me as a hopeful thing. — Andrew Schneider

It's kind of funny to me listening to people who claim to have these great records of winning a hundred and some odd straight felony cases without a loss and that kind of stuff that you hear of all the time. I'm here to tell you, if you let me pick out which hundred cases I get to try, I'll win a hundred of them in a row, too. Case selection is everything in creating records like that. My philosophy was, I tried them all. If I made a determination that the evidence was sufficient to justify the prosecution, then I would try the case, and certainly whenever you do that, you're going to lose a certain percentage of them. — Mark Baker

I could teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case. Yet for all three years in most law schools the casebook method of learning the law is still in. The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process. — Gerry Spence

If, adhering closely to the absolute, we try to avoid all difficulties by a stroke of the pen, and insist with logical strictness that in every case the extreme must be the object, and the utmost effort must be exerted in that direction, such a stroke of the pen would be a mere paper law, not by any means adapted to the real world. — Carl Von Clausewitz

And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner divine law, not only cannot carry out the enactments of the external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine law of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state obligations), he cannot even recognize the duty of obedience to anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize the duty of what is called allegiance. — Leo Tolstoy

When I was younger and women first started to get in public positions, in my case the law, we went through a period where we wore those little ribbon ties, little bows. We tried to figure out what was our appropriate dress. — Hillary Clinton

You're told that you're supposed to go to college, but you're also told that you are being self-indulgent if you actually want to get an education. As opposed to what? Going into consulting isn't self-indulgent? Going into finance isn't self-indulgent? Going into law, like most of the people who do, in order to make yourself rich, isn't self-indulgent? It's not okay to study history, because what good does that really do anyone, but it is okay to work for a hedge fund. It's selfish to pursue your passion, unless it's also going to make you a lot of money, in which case it isn't selfish at all. — William Deresiewicz

In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Plainly it is not every error made by a witness which affects his credibility. In each case the trier of fact has to make an evaluation; taking into account such matters as the nature of the contradictions, their number and importance, and their bearing on other parts of the witness's evidence. — H.C. Nicholas

The evidence which we have of the great facts of the Bible history belongs to this class, that is, it is moral evidence; sufficient to satisfy any rational mind, by carrying it to the highest degree of moral certainty. If such evidence well justify the taking away of human life or liberty, in the one case, surely it ought to be deemed sufficient to determine our faith in the other. — Simon Greenleaf

We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law's treatment.

But 'fairness' is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed--the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. — David Mamet

We must stop viewing ourselves as separate and disconnected from the rest of life, as if we are a special case and the laws of nature or karma do not apply to us. — Sharon Gannon

It appears that, as is the case in our time with the ills of all nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusions deduced from them and commonly called 'civilization'. — Mahatma Gandhi

The truth, however, is that most Muslims appear to be "fundamental-
ist" in the Western sense of the word - in that even "moderate"
approaches to Islam generally consider the Koran to be the literal and
inerrant word of the one true God. The difference between funda-
mentalists and moderates - and certainly the difference between all
"extremists" and moderates - is the degree to which they see political
and military action to be intrinsic to the practice of their faith. In any
case, people who believe that Islam must inform every dimension of
human existence, including politics and law, are now generally called
not "fundamentalists" or "extremists" but, rather, "Islamists. — Sam Harris

I'd represent "Love" when it sued hypocritical writers for abuse. — Natalya Vorobyova

A great believer in precedent,' Della Street said. 'I think if he were ever confronted with a really novel situation he'd faint. He runs to his law books, digs around like a mole and finally comes up with case that's what he calls on all fours and was decided seventy-five or a hundred years ago. — Erle Stanley Gardner

If the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the ship owners, or artists and comedians; then certainly, in this case, there is no class which may not try, and with reason, to place its hand upon the law, that would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility, and that would overturn society rather than not obtain it. Even beggars and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an incontestable title to it. — Frederic Bastiat

In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Law enforcement: a case of good men doing bad chores. — Stephen King

If the rights of civil partners are met differently in law to those of married couples, there is no discrimination in law, and if civil partnerships are seen as somehow 'second class' that is a social attitude which will change and cannot, in any case, be turned around by redefining the law of marriage. — John Sentamu

The initial configuration of the universe may have been chosen by God, or it may itself have been determined by the laws of science. In either case, it would seem that everything in the universe would then be determined by evolution according to the laws of science, so it is difficult to see how we can be masters of our fate. — Stephen Hawking

Sec. 10. Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation from him that has done it: and any other person, who finds it just, may also join with him that is injured, and assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he has suffered. — John Locke

In our case, the law really was blind; in its mistreatment of women, it knew no religion, race or creed. — Azar Nafisi

The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist. — Isaiah Berlin

In its proper meaning equality before the law means the right to participate in the making of the laws by which one is governed, a constitution which guarantees democratic rights to all sections of the population, the right to approach the court for protection or relief in the case of the violation of rights guaranteed in the constitution, and the right to take part in the administration of justice as judges, magistrates, attorneys-general, law advisers and similar positions. — Nelson Mandela

It would be easy to assume that the open letter is a symptom of the Internet age. Such is not the case. In 1774, Benjamin Franklin wrote an open letter to the prime minister of Great Britain, Lord North - a satirical call for the imposition of martial law in the colonies. — Roxane Gay

Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death. — Milan Kundera

What if you kill a man who was plotting to shoot up a McDonald's? What if you commit one murder to prevent a dozen murders? The "obviously correct" judgment of the law starts to sound more and more like an opinion when a new variable is introduced, doesn't it? And okay, these "what if this?" exercises may feel like cerebral game play, but you don't even need to look to extreme examples to see the tenuous, opinion-based nature of laws. Abortion. Gay marriage. Determining fair use in a copyright infringement case. Every time a law is applied, it is applied as a matter of opinion. And those are the laws -- the biggest and baddest rules we have. — Johnny B. Truant

Religion doesn't start with a set of laws or rules and it doesn't start with a set of ideas. It starts with an encounter, with the living God and in our case, Christ risen from the dead. In that encounter you meet someone you can trust. That's faith: trust in truth. — Francis George

2003 case before the Supreme Court in which Nike claimed that it had the First Amendment right to lie in its corporate marketing, a variation on the First Amendment right of free speech. (Except in certain contract and law enforcement/court situations, it's perfectly legal for human persons to lie in the United States. — Thom Hartmann

American women are characteristically frigid and materialistic. The man who 'has his way' with an American girl is under a material obligation to her. The woman has granted a material favour. In cases of divorce American law overwhelmingly favours the woman. American women will divorce readily enough when they see a better bargain. It is frequently the case in America that a woman will be married to one man but already 'engaged' to a future husband, the man she plans to marry after a profitable divorce. — Julius Evola

I had been on another procedural show, 'Cold Case,' for seven years, and I certainly respected the legacy of 'Law & Order,' even though I had only seen a handful of episodes. Being a dad meant the reality was that I probably knew more about Dora and Diego. But I saw the show with fresh eyes, and I wasn't coming in with a bunch of baggage. — Danny Pino

Before we condemn the jurors who acquitted George Zimmerman, we should remember that they were asked to do something extraordinary. They were asked to listen to the facts and apply the law to the best of their ability in a case the world was watching. — Alafair Burke

I know that many Irish-born New Yorkers are caught in the trap of our federal immigration policies. If we are going to continue to attract the best and the brightest - and Ireland has more than its fair share - we need to inject some common sense into our immigration laws, and I'm doing my best to make that case in Washington. — Michael Bloomberg

The individual case does not serve only to confirm a law from which practical predictions can be made. Its ideal is rather to understand the phenomenon itself in its unique and historical concreteness. However much experiential universals are involved, the aim is not to confirm and extend these universalized experiences in order to attain knowledge of a law - e.g., how men, peoples, and states evolve - but to understand how this man, this people, or this state is what it has become or, more generally, how it happened that it is so. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now — Arthur Miller

The amusement she had drawn from their disapproval was a slavish remnant, a derisive dance on the north bank of the Ohio. There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them. If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilization. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. But now she was able to forget them without flouting them by her forgetfulness. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law. — Theodore Roosevelt

The first demonstration of the law of conservation of energy was not by a physicist but by a medical man. He demonstrated with rats. If you burn food you can find out how much heat is generated. If you then feed the same amount of food to rats it is converted, with oxygen, into carbon dioxide, in the same way as in burning. When you measure the energy in each case you find out that living creatures do exactly the same as non-living creatures. The law for conservation of energy is as true for life as for other phenomena. Incidentally, — Richard Feynman

Lincoln found himself in a stifling courtroom one hot summer day, pleading his client's case. The opposing lawyer, in a concession to the oppressive heat, took off his coat and vest as the debate went on. The man's shirt had its buttons in the back, a style which was unusual even then. Lincoln looked at his opponent and sized up the man's apparel. Knowing that the rural jury disliked pretension of any kind, or any attempt to show superior social rank, he said: "Gentlemen of the jury, having justice on my side, I don't think you will be at all influenced by the gentleman's pretended knowledge of the law, when you see he does not even know which side of his shirt should be in front." The jury burst into laughter, and Lincoln won the case. — Rriiver Nyile

She sent you to your death once, in case you've forgotten," he said, a sudden chill dropping into his voice. "Why should her collapse concern me?"
I paused. Tybalt was a cat before he was anything else. If something didn't affect him personally, he was unlikely to give a damn. Slowly, I said, "Because Rayseline is blaming me, and if Luna dies
"
"The little bitch will push for your execution under Oberon's law," he snarled. I blinked. I'd expected a reaction, but nothing that strong. — Seanan McGuire

The law of all modern states takes account of associations, whose members, in theory, pursue the common end with equal zeal. The experience of all associations proves, however, that this is not the case, and that a lively, constant and vigorous awareness of the end is found only in a minority of the associates; an association is really rather like a comet - a large tail of docile followers dragged along by a small dynamic head. — Bertrand De Jouvenel

In the case of maternal health care, you look at, well naturally, it's the mother who's the customer, who makes the decisions. But in truth, the mother in many areas, in certain parts of India, the mother has very little decision-making power at all. The real decision-maker is the mother-in-law. — Jacqueline Novogratz

They say that at Thomas More's trial, Master Secretary here followed the jury to their deliberations, and when they were seated he closed the door behind him and he laid down the law. "Let me put you out of doubt," he said to the jurymen. "Your task is to find Sir Thomas guilty, and you will have no dinner till you have done it." Then out he went and shut the door again and stood outside it with a hatchet in his hand, in case they broke out in search of a boiled pudding; and being Londoners, they care about their bellies above all things, and as soon as they felt them rumbling they cried, "Guilty! He is as guilty as guilty can be! — Hilary Mantel

In my case, with my law degree, I was able to be an investment banker, in-house counsel, op-ed columnist, and author. No other degree except for the JD offers so many possibilities. More than knowing the law, the JD degree gives you a more invaluable skill set - the ability to think in a structured way to get to a solution. This type of skill set can be leveraged in almost any field. The only limit is your imagination. — Ann K. Levine

I think the media projected the case of Asia Bibi in a right way. They have given the importance of this case and especially how the blasphemy law is being misused for the victimization [of religious minorities]. — Shahbaz Bhatti

But when General Ziaul Haq introduced the strict blasphemy - 295 A, B, C - of Pakistan's penal code, then from 1986 to today there are hundreds cases that are registered under the protection of blasphemy law. And until today, no case against any minorities, and especially Christians, is proved in the higher court. The lower court would order punishment but the higher court would always acquit people. So it proves that this law is being used as a tool of victimization against minorities and innocent people of Pakistan. — Shahbaz Bhatti

We should evaluate judges and judicial nominees based on the general process for applying the law to any legal disputes, not on the specific result in a particular case or dispute. — Orrin Hatch

The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population? — Jeffrey Dhywood

Some of the worst abuses of government force in recent years were precipitated by technical and victimless gun-law violations. For example, the BATF claimed that the Branch Davidians possessed machine guns without paying the required federal tax and filling in the proper registration forms. So a tax case worth less than $10,000 led to a 76-man helicopter, machine gun, and grenade assault on a home in which 2/3 of the occupants were women and children. — Dave Kopel

While Norah described to me her plans for carpets and curtains, or showed me the sample of bedspread material she had hung over a chair to see if she could live with it. When I began to know her, I wondered if their courtship had been, for her, something of the same
my brother draped over a chair for the statutory length of time, to see if she could live with him. In that case she might have noticed that he did not really go with the surroundings; perhaps she did see this, but knew that he would fade to a better match. — Shirley Hazzard

It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow, which we can relieve and do not, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin then? — Mark Twain

There will come a time when the gun owners of America, the law-abiding gun owners of America, will be the Rosa Parks and we will sit down on the front seat of the bus, case closed, — Ted Nugent

You're killing me, Rebecca," Law muttered, probably not realizing that in his case, it really was a double entendre. — Meg Cooper

It is far more important the law should be administered with absolute integrity, than that in this case or in that the law should be a good law or a bad one. — John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

If a supernatural being is to be exempt from natural law, it cannot possess specific, determinate
characteristics. These attributes would impose limits and these limits would restrict the capacities
of this supernatural being. In this case, a supernatural being would be subject to the causal
relationships that mark natural existence, which would disqualify it as a god. Therefore, we must
somehow conceive of a being without a specific nature, a being that is indeterminate - a being, in
other words, that is nothing in particular. But these characteristics (or, more precisely, lack of
characteristics) are incompatible with the notion of existence itself. — George H. Smith

I think that it is important for people to understand that whether a good-guy or a bad-guy wins a case is less important than what the law is that the case results in. — Floyd Abrams

The rules and principles of case law have never been treated as final truths but as working hypotheses, continually retested in those great laboratories of the law, the courts of justice. Every new case is an experiment, and if the accepted rule which seems applicable yields a result which is felt to be unjust, the rule is reconsidered. — Benjamin N. Cardozo

(The law) is like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. — Robert Penn Warren

There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor. — W. Somerset Maugham

We must look at the institution of slavery as publicists, and not as casuists. It is a question of law, and not a case of conscience. — Roger Brooke Taney

I happened to notice that among the men who had willingly presented themselves for jury-service was one whom I knew to be the father of seven children. Under a law of Augustus's he was exempt for the rest of his life; yet he had not pleaded for exemption or mentioned the size of his family. I told the magistrate: "Strike this man's name off. He's a father of seven." He protested: "But, Caesar, he has made no attempt to excuse himself." "Exactly," I said, "he wants to be a juryman. Strike him off." I meant, of course,that the fellow was concealing his immunity from what every honest man considered a very thankless and disagreeable duty and that he therefore was almost certain to have crooked intentions. Crooked jurymen could pick up a lot of money by bribes, for it was a commonplace that one interested juryman could sway the opinions of a whole bunch of uninterested ones; and the majority verdict decided a case. — Robert Graves

Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means a defense, as in a court of law. Christian apologetics involves making a case for the truth of the Christian faith. — William Lane Craig

As is the case in our time with the ills of all nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusions deduced from them and commonly called 'civilization'. Your — Leo Tolstoy

Every man must be taken to be cognizant of the law, otherwise there is no saying to what extent the excuse of ignorance may not be Law carried. It would be urged in almost every case. — Edward Law, 1st Earl Of Ellenborough

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." This — G.K. Chesterton

Contract law is essentially a defensive scorched-earth battleground where the constant question is, if my business partner was possessed by a brain-eating monster from beyond spacetime tomorrow, what is the worst thing they could do to me? — Charles Stross

Law and justice are from time to time inevitably in conflict ... The jury ... adjusts the general rule of law to the justice to the particular case. Thus the odium of inflexible rules of law is avoided, and popular satisfaction is preserved ... That is what jury trial does. It supplies that flexibility of legal rules which is essential to justice and popular contentment. — John Henry Wigmore

I've talked to law enforcement officials at the state and local level who say that violence against women is going up. In any case, we think that it's an important issue whether it's going up or not. And we are determined to stop it. — Patricia Ireland

The algebraic sum of all the transformations occurring in a cyclical process can only be positive, or, as an extreme case, equal to nothing.
[Statement of the second law of thermodynamics, 1862] — Rudolf Clausius

Nobody is above the law. Imagine if there allegations against Modi and he is the Prime Minister. Should the case not be pursued just because he has become the PM. It should not be so that it should be stopped. I am not above the law. — Narendra Modi

Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they're given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It's a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole — Ralph Nader

Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors,
why the judge does not dismiss his case,
why the preacher does not dismisshis congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all. — Henry David Thoreau

A judge can't have any preferred outcome in any particular case. The judge's only obligation - and it's a solemn obligation - is to the rule of law. — Samuel Alito

The market tends to pay as a wage what an individual laborer is worth. But the case last studied suggests the question how accurately the law operates in practice. May it not be an honest law, but be so vitiated in its working as to give a dishonest result? — John Bates Clark

A recent book by University of Chicago professor of philosophy and law Brian Leiter outlines what I believe will become the theoretical consensus that does away with religious liberty in spirit if not in letter. "There is no principled reason," he writes, "for legal or constitutional regimes to single out religion for protection." . . . Evoking the principle of fairness, Leiter argues that everybody's conscience should be accorded the same legal protections. Thus he proposes to replace religious liberty with a plenary "liberty of conscience."

Leiter's argument is libertarian. He wants to get the government out of the business of deciding whose conscience is worth protecting. This mentality seems to expand freedom, but that's an illusion. In practice it will lead to diminished freedom, as is always the case with any thoroughgoing libertarianism. — R. R. Reno

For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged. — Thomas Hobbes

I can imagine no greater catastrophe than if I were mistaken, and the theory were correct that what I consider secondary instincts or drives are actually primary instincts! Because in that case the emotional plague would rest upon the support of a natural law while its archenemies, truth and sociality, would be relying upon unfounded ethics. Until now both lies and truth have taken recourse to ethics. But only lies have profited because they were able to appear under the guise of truth. Under these circumstances, egoism, theft, petty selfishness, slander, etc., would be the natural rule. (26.july.1943) — Wilhelm Reich

An isolated system or a system in a uniform environment (which for the present consideration we do best to include as a part of the system we contemplate) increases its entropy and more or less rapidly approaches the inert state of maximum entropy. We now recognize this fundamental law of physics to be just the natural tendency of things to approach the chaotic state (the same tendency that the books of a library or the piles of papers and manuscripts on a writing desk display) unless we obviate it. (The analogue of irregular heat motion, in this case, is our handling those objects now and again without troubling to put them back in their proper places.) — Erwin Schrodinger

Multi-millionaires who pay half or less than half of the percentage of tax the rest of us pay justify their actions by saying they pay what the law requires. Though true, the fact is they found ways within the law to beat the purpose of the law - which, in the case of taxes, is that we all pay our fair share. — Simon Sinek