Statutory Quotes & Sayings

The common law does not proceed by legislation, or by imposing directives and decrees on a reluctant population. It proceeds by resolving conflicts, and discovering the rules that are implicit in those conflicts and in the behaviour that gives rise to them. Common law is discovered law, and its principles are not imposed from above but extracted from below, by judges whose aim is to do justice in the individual case, rather than to reform the conduct of mankind. Its rights are not stated but implied, and they encapsulate a vision of individual freedom rather than a politics of collective conformity. The rights dreamed up in the European Courts, by judges who do not pay the cost of imposing them, are experiments in social engineering, rather than recognitions of individual sovereignty, and this is in no matter more evident than in those clauses that have imposed the mores of the elite on a reluctant residue of Christian believers, and which are now ubiquitous in our statutory law. — Roger Scruton

President Obama's reelection started the countdown for lawmakers to address the fiscal cliff and the statutory debt limit. Unless the President and House Republicans can agree on changes to current law, the U.S. economy will be in recession by spring. — Mark Zandi

So that's the story of how I committed statutory rape less than twenty-four hours out of prison
on my birthday no less — Joanna Wylde

I think this president has so badly abused his power, breached his trust in remarkable ways with our Congress, with the American people, has violated so many of our international treaty obligations, our Constitution, our domestic statutory laws, and has been responsible for ordering and condoning heinous human rights violations. We need to draw the line. — Rocky Anderson

We commissioned an independent statutory economic body - the Productivity Commission - to review the possibility of funding a disability scheme. The commission returned with a view that it could. Then it becomes an issue of national will. — Bill Shorten

Statutory regulations, legislative enactments, constitutional provisions, are invasive. They never yet induced man to do anything he could and would not do by virtue of his intellect or temperament, nor prevented anything that man was impelled to do by the same dictates. — Emma Goldman

I didn't want to make it a lifetime thing. I don't believe in statutory term limits, but people can limit themselves if they want to, and that's what I decided to do. — George J. Mitchell

First, the oil and gas business pays its fair share of taxes. Despite the current debate on energy taxes, few businesses pay more in taxes than oil and gas companies. The worldwide effective tax rate for our industry in 2010 was 40 percent. That's higher than the U.S. statutory rate of 35 percent and the rate for manufacturers of 26.5 percent. — John S. Watson

If we can't have the courage to tell our constituents, hey, we've got to cut back, then if we can point to something and say, I would like to vote for more benefits for you, but this balanced budget amendment or statutory spending cap or whatever the device is, is preventing me from doing it. — Jeff Flake

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes an annual appropriation that we provide in accordance with a statutory formula, the vast majority of which goes directly to public radio and television stations. — Earl Blumenauer

Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness. — Immanuel Kant

There are many who suppose a democracy cannot be tyrannical, by definition. But of all its forms, the most odious type of tyranny is one propagated by a majority in sole possession of statutory power, giving it free reign to step on and humiliate the minority. Those in the minority should always be afforded an equal right to express their views and have their liberty respected. — W. Kristjan Arnold

For far too long the American public and business sector have kept their silence as civil liberties have been whittled away by statutory and regulatory measures. — Bob Barr

Youth Liberation has argued for some time that young people should have the right to have sex as well as not to have it, and with whom they choose. The statutory structure of the sex laws has been identified as oppressive and insulting to young people. A range of sexual activities are legally defined as molestation, regardless of the quality of the relationship or the amount of consent involved. — Gayle Rubin

However, the sovereignty of the states is constitutionally defined and recognized, while the powers of the local government in Puerto Rico are defined by, and subject to alteration under, federal statutory law. — Dick Thornburgh

Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do. — Bruce Bartlett

When I came home after my statutory term as surgeon general, I just resumed my life here in southern Arizona. Teaching at the university; my law enforcement career. Sitting on some boards. All the things I did before. — Richard Carmona

If I find out you laid a hand on my daughter
"
"What?" said Gabriel. "You'll stand here and bitch about it?"
"Stop it!" cried Layne, dragging his coat and backpack from the kitchen. Her dad took a step forward.
"I'll have you arrested and charged with trespassing and statutory rape."
"Then I'm going to need another fifteen minutes. — Brigid Kemmerer

Perhaps sensing the dismal failure of its efforts to show that 'established by the State' means 'established by the State or the Federal Government,' the Court tries to palm off the pertinent statutory phrase as inartful drafting.' This Court, however, has no free-floating power 'to rescue Congress from its drafting errors.' — Antonin Scalia

I wish you hadn't told her. If you must know, I could have done without your telling her I commited statutory rape on the living room couch with her cousin. - Michael Curry — Anne Rice

From a distance a metronome is ticking through the fog, and I mechanically chew to the familiar caress of its music, counting, along with everyone else, up to fifty: fifty statutory chews for each mouthful. And, still mechanically beating out the time, I go downstairs, and, like everyone else, check off my name in the book as one leaving the premises. But I sense that I'm living separately from everyone else, alone, surrounded by a soft, soundproof wall, and that my world is on my side of this wall. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate. — John L. Lewis

Internet Explorer, your honor, is the fruit of Microsoft's statutory violations and it should be denied them. — Brendan Sullivan

We need statutory spending limits written into law. — Pat Toomey

I had the good fortune to be thrown unexpectedly into something called the Labour Research Unit - a little known organisation set up to assist the fledgling labour movement. It was not a company, nor a statutory board, nor a government department - in fact it did not exist at all as a legal entity. Thus in slightly unorthodox circumstances I became part of that struggle. — S R Nathan

The Court's decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery. That philosophy ignores the American people's decision to give Congress '[a]ll legislative Powers' enumerated in the Constitution. They made Congress, not this Court, responsible for both making laws and mending them. — Antonin Scalia

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

Danny," Ripper whispered in my ear. "Three songs gone by and there's some old fuckin' bitch makin' statutory rape faces at me. — Madeline Sheehan