Quotes & Sayings About The Justice System

As soon as the injured classes have recovered their political rights, their first thought is not to abolish plunder (this would suppose them to possess enlightenment, which they cannot have), but to organize against the other classes, and to their own detriment, a system of reprisals - as if it was necessary, before the reign of justice arrives, that all should undergo a cruel retribution - some for their iniquity and some for their ignorance. — Frederic Bastiat

Are you the government?"
He seemed surprised by the question. "Does the government fight evil?"
I thought about it. For some reason, the first thing that came to mind wasn't the FBI or the justice system, but my last trip to the DMV. "Well," I said, "it can."
"Lots of things can fight evil," True replied. "Cinderblocks, for example
if a Cinderblock had fallen in Josef Stalin's crib, the twentieth century might have been a bit more pleasant.( ... ) — Matt Ruff

People demand a lot of the justice system and they demand things that it can't deliver. — Helen Garner

He knew that justice was rarely dispensed within the four walls of the courtroom. — Kenneth Eade

The American people do not want people thumbing their nose at the law. It undercuts the very fabric of our society and the system of civil justice and of criminal justice as well. — Ernest Istook

Justice is no longer a concern of the justice system. — Paul Craig Roberts

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals" and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. — Michelle Alexander

But whatever any of them thought one thing was always certain: even though they suffered and had to struggle at times to bring meaning and even the most basic dignity into their existence and even though in their search for justice and truthfulness they were beaten down and met with disappointment again and again - their lives were not available for use as an illustration. Theirs were not stories that could be read as an affirmation of another system. — Nadeem Aslam

A fierce and sentimental addiction to forms makes us shudder at change. It is much easier to say that the system is all right-only the people need to be improved. — Charles Ferguson

The business of popularizing crime is how we expose the faults in our justice system. It's how we expose police misconduct. — Bill James

The purpose of our justice system is to reflect the values of our society and to punish those who violate our standards. — Stella Young

As readers, as people, we might not have the capacity to change the justice system. But as Dylan says in the book, we can change one person's perspective at a time. We can notice. We can speak up. We can teach this generation, my generation, that the way sexual assault is viewed and treated in this country is not okay, so that when it is our turn to step into the shoes of political office and criminal justice, we can continue changing the narrative from a place of power.
And more than anything, we can support. And we can empower. We can love.
We can be better. — Cora Carmack

Given a situation, a system with a Leerstelle [a gap], whether a given completion (Lueckenfuellung) does justice to the structure, is the "right" one, is often determined by the structure of the system, the situation. There are requirements, structurally determined; there are possible in pure cases unambiguous decisions as to which completion does justice to the situation, which does not, which violates the requirements and the situation. — Max Wertheimer

Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today.Evil unchecked grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system. And because we have tolerated our past and present evils, international affairs are poisoned and law and justice have disappeared from them. — Jawaharlal Nehru

In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God's existence, God's justice, God's love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living. — Erich Fromm

Texans for Public Justice, an anti-corruption group based in Texas applauded the indictment. No jury can undo the outcome of Texas 2002 elections, ... but the justice system must punish those who criminally conspire to undermine democracy no matter how powerful they may be. If we are to be a democracy, then powerful politicians cannot flout such laws with impunity. — Craig McDonald

The judge punishes lawbreakers as a burning house injures its occupants. A person may be burned to death while robbing a home or saving a friend. Similarly, from a moral point of view, the judge's work is good or evil, depending on whether the laws he enforces are good or evil. — Thomas Szasz

The problem with our education system is not that parents do not have a choice. The problem is that inequities continue to exist. — Patsy Mink

Johnny Cash was a rebel, not only just in the musical sense, but he was somebody who was for the people, and an advocate for labor, for workers, for prisoners, people who have been trapped by the criminal justice system. — Michael Franti

The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivations. — Clive James

I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails. — Rebecca West

Even a man accused of the worst act of terrorism ever committed in this country - especially such a man - is entitled to the best possible defense. This concept is a cornerstone of our justice system. — Stephen Jones

By the mid-1770s, the system of bond labor had been thoroughly transformed into a racial caste system predicated on slavery. The degraded status of Africans was justified on the ground that Negros, like the Indians, were an uncivilized lesser race, perhaps even more lacking in intelligence and laudable human qualities than the red-skinned natives. The notion of white supremacy rationalized the enslavement of Africans, even as whites endeavored to form a new nation based on the ideals of equality, liberty, and justice for all. Before democracy, chattel slavery in America was born. — Michelle Alexander

If the public can't see justice being done, or afford the costs of justice, then the entire system becomes little more than a cozy club solely for the benefit of judges, lawyers and their lackeys, a sort of care in the community for the upper middle classes. — Heather Brooke

Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty? — Edward Kennedy

We must embrace a new agenda based on inclusiveness; a commitment to reconnecting the social and the economic; a relinking of the latter to a plausible redistributive system; and a determination to ensure that everyone has access to justice. All these things are within our reach. — Noreena Hertz

Any racial justice movement, to be successful, must vigorously challenge the public consensus that underlies the prevailing system of control. Nooses, — Michelle Alexander

I do all I can to let my students feel as normal as possible, as far from institutionalized. I see how easy it is to allow this conveyor belt of incarceration bring them from my facility to an adult detention, often for the rest of their lives. — Thomm Quackenbush

New York City is a tinderbox. The Sons of the Serpent - a white supremacist group with a twisted history, deep pockets, and long reach - declared it a combat zone. As they have many times before, they're unashamedly ginning bigotry and hatred into violence and bloodshed. But this time, they've gotten smart about it. Instead of parading through the streets in hoods and robes ... they've gone undercover. Dozens upon dozens of them, hiding inside the New York justice system so they can control the law. Control the people. And as God is my witness, I will drive them out and strike them down ... no matter what the cost. — Mark Waid

That is the lesson I have learned about our justice system and their war on insider trading. It doesn't matter what you did but what you do when they ask for your cooperation. — James Fleishman

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation. — Howard Zinn

The price of being a nice guy is too high - much too high - in terms of the system of justice. — Jed S. Rakoff

Indeed, the Judges in the courts of law are more likely to be exposed to conflicts and disputes where the utility of law is at its highest realm where interpretation takes the fore wheel. It is in the courts, that failure to implement the law repercussions come up in the form of disputes and conflicts and where the judges are expected to deliver their best within the precincts of the law. — Henrietta Newton Martin

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Our constitutionally-based criminal justice system places a high value on protecting the innocent. Among its central tenets is the idea that it is better to let a guilty person go free than to convict someone without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. — Robert Shapiro

The government's rationale here is beautiful in its simplicity. American criminals have constitutional rights not because they are natural-born Americans but precisely because they are criminals. Deportations, however, are not part of the criminal justice system. "Removal proceedings," wrote the circuit judge in the Gutierrez-Berdin case, "are civil, not criminal, and the exclusionary rule does not generally apply to them." So the undocumented alien who kills a room full of Rotarians with an ax has a right to counsel, a phone call, and protection against improper searches. The alien caught crossing the street on his way to work has no rights at all. Strangest — Matt Taibbi

Dealing with a simple burglary can require 1,000 process steps and 70 forms to be completed as a case goes through the Criminal Justice System. That can't be right. — Theresa May

Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African-American kids are unemployed, it is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system. — Bernie Sanders

You think you're going to impress an American jury with [your] words? In the eyes of the Americans, you're doomed. Just looking at you in an orange suit, chains, and being Muslim and Arabic is enough to convict you. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

The criminal justice system, like any system designed by human beings, clearly has its flaws. — Ben Whishaw

There they are. Lieutenant Jack Loveday and Lieutenant Alex Wakeman. I've only seen their photos so far and the pictures that are in Demos's head, but the truth is Demos did not do them justice. In fact, Demos's head needs a tune up or a reboot or an entirely new operating system altogether. — Sarah Alderson

We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

I have the documents. Documents, proof, evidence, photograph, signature. One day you raise your right hand and you are American. They give you an American Pass port. The United States of America. Somewhere someone has taken my identity and replaced it with their photograph. The other one. Their signature their seals. Their own image. And you learn the executive branch the legislative branch and the third. Justice. Judicial branch. It makes the difference The rest is past. — Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, "Let justice roll down like mighty waters," and quite another to work out the irrigation system. — William Sloane Coffin

I've written about illegal immigrants in the United States; I spent a year following migrant farm workers as they were harvesting. I've written about our criminal justice system, and how it treats the victims of crime. I've been working for years now on a book about prisons in America, and I've been going into prisons and traveling around the country and seeing what's going on. — Eric Schlosser

And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Courtrooms are battlegrounds where society's bullies and the oppressed clash, where the victims of abusers seek recompense, and where parties cheated by scalawags seek retribution. Because of the high stakes involved, the parties are not always honest, and justice depends upon an array of factors including the prevailing case precedent, the skills of the legal advocates, and the merits of each party's claims and counterclaims. — Kilroy J. Oldster

What they wanted to establish was a system of "People's Law," where the government is kept under the control of the people and political power is maintained at the balanced center with enough government to maintain security, justice, and good order, but not enough government to abuse the people. The — W. Cleon Skousen

I intend to see that justice is done by presiding, in the manner of the omnipotent Walter Mitty, as chief justice of a tribunal trying the case of those plotting further advances for the Chinese characters on an international scale. Emulating the operatic Mikado's "object all sublime... to let the punishment fit the crime," I hand down the following dread decree:

Anyone who believes Chinese characters to be a superior system of writing that can function as a universal script is condemned to complete the task of rendering the whole of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address into Singlish.
— John DeFrancis

There is another, more sinister consequence of affirmative action: the carefully engineered appearance of great racial progress strengthens the "colorblind" public consensus that personal and cultural traits, not structural arrangements, are largely responsible for the fact that the majority of young black men in urban areas across the United States are currently under the control of the criminal justice system or branded as felons for life. In — Michelle Alexander

Race determines everything in the criminal justice system — Mark Geragos

Clarence Darrow, one of history's greatest lawyers, once noted "There is no such thing as justice, in or out of court." Perhaps because justice is a flawed concept that ultimately comes down to the decision of twelve people. People with their own experiences, prejudices, feelings about what defines right and wrong. Which is why, when the system fails us, we must go out and seek our own justice. — Emily Thorne

It is the fight for a new economy, a new energy system, a new democracy, a new relationship to the planet and to each other, for land, water, and food sovereignty, for Indigenous rights, for human rights and dignity for all people. When climate justice wins we win the world that we want. We can't sit this one out, not because we have too much to lose but because we have too much to gain. . . . We are bound together in this battle, not just for a reduction in the parts per million of CO2, but to transform our economies and rebuild a world that we want today. — Naomi Klein

Social justice has to do with issues such as poverty, inequality, war, racism, sexism, abortion, and lack of concern for ecology because what lies at the root at each of these is not so much someone's private sin but rather a huge, blind system that is inherently unfair. — Ronald Rolheiser

There is no more reprehensible god playing than the use of children for sexual gratification, the exploitation of widows and their children by distant relatives after the death of a father, the misuse of police powers to extort false confessions and protect the perpetrators of sexual violence, or the serial enslavement of generation after generation to extract payments on unpayable debts. All of these and more are abuses of power that IJM targets in countries around the world where the public justice system does not work on behalf of the poor and powerless. — Andy Crouch

One of the most corrosive aspects of the criminal justice system is its toleration of the insanity defense...Legitimate in some few cases, the insanity defense has been rendered farcical through its manipulation by so-called experts. — Robert K. Tanenbaum

I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system. — Noam Chomsky

Specifically, the growing threat that sexual predators pose to our Nation's children and their families represents an area where our criminal justice system has failed the American people. — Paul Gillmor

If one could be enraged by the loss of a favorite sports team, shouldn't his anger rise at the entrenchment of a scheme whereby no innocent person was safe, where self-determination was a crime punished by the vagaries of an opaque & impervious justice system? — Ausma Zehanat Khan

Social systems are neither a consumer product that we can buy or rent from the market nor a material that we can import from another country. It is not a creation of the almighty gifted from the heavens. A social system is a creation of mankind. That is a reflection of our responsibilities. In other words, the social system is the result of our behavior and the decisions we take in our way of life. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Well, of course I think people can be forgiven. But our justice system is not set up to dispense forgiveness. You can go to the local priest for that. — Nancy Grace

The acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice. — Lee Kuan Yew

The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done. — Lawrence Lessig

Wall Street crime, in part, is a confidence game in which the criminal justice system itself is the mark. — Matt Taibbi

Unfortunately, the American justice system is just riddled with lies and inconsistencies. — Tommy Chong

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. — Montesquieu

The goal is not to just have rapists expelled from schools. I don't want rapists transferring schools. I don't want them out there, being able to commit these crimes. I want them to go to prison. But if you understand this crime and you understand what happens in the reporting of this crime and the support that a victim does or does not get, you realize that our legislation increases the likelihood that a young woman will go to the police in a timely manner and that the police will investigate and that they will be able to administer real justice in the criminal system. — Claire McCaskill

Seven thousand of them were indicted and arraigned, and then they entered the maw of the criminal justice system - right here - through the gateway into Gibraltar, where the vans were lined up. That was about 150 new cases, 150 more pumping hearts and morose glares, every week that the courts and the Bronx County District Attorney's Office were open. And to what end? The same stupid, dismal, pathetic, horrifying crimes were committed day in and day out, all the same. What was accomplished by assistant D.A.'s, by any of them, through all this relentless stirring of the muck? The Bronx crumbled and decayed a little more, and a little more blood dried in the cracks. The Doubts! One thing was accomplished for sure. The system was fed, and those vans brought in the chow. — Tom Wolfe

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions
poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed
which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. — Howard Zinn

For too long we have occupied ourselves with responding to the consequences of cruelty and abuse and have neglected the important task of building up an ethical system in which justice for animals is regarded as the norm rather than the exception. Our only hope is to put our focus on the education of the young. — John Hoyt

Justice isn't about fixing the past; it's about healing the past's future. — Jackson Burnett

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler. — Georges Bernanos

No one should ever be wrongfully deprived of their rights to liberty and freedom without just cause, yet in the past 25 years alone thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to tens of thousands of years in prison. — Bernard B. Kerik

Ultimately abortion takes place because there is something wrong within the culture, within the system, and not simply because this or that particular woman is seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy. — Ronald Rolheiser

The truth is the justice system does need review, there are troubling questions that need to be answered, law enforcement needs to respect the community and the community needs to respect law enforcement. — Mario Cuomo

Look, the justice system is made up of people. People have faults. It's not perfect. — Nancy Grace

I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system. — Paul Broun

Seemingly by design, the American legal system encourages defense counsel to be as mendacious as possible. As Monroe Freedman, a legal ethicist and former dean of Hofstra Law School, has written, "The attorney is obligated to attack, if he can, the reliability or credibility of an opposing witness whom he knows to be truthful." It's an essential component of our adversarial system of justice, based on the theory that justice is best achieved not through a third-party investigation directed by an impartial judge but, instead, through vigorous disputation by the interested parties: trial by verbal combat. The — Jon Krakauer

We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California. — Kamala Harris

For me, taking the sort of dry principles of the law and bringing them into contact with human beings ... it's like you jump into hyperspace. And everything that's dull about the books and the theory becomes provocative. — Michael Ponsor

Crime and punishment can be summed up in two classifications: there are bad people and there are people who get into bad situations. The lines for liberation and rehabilitation should first begin with the people who get into bad situations. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

My first endeavor was to save the core of the German system of justice: the independent judiciary. — Hans Frank

Over the last few years a lot of people have become aware of the inequities in the criminal justice system, right now, with our overall crime rate and incarceration rate both falling, we're at a moment when some good people in both parties, Republicans and Democrats and folks all across the country, are coming up with ideas to make the system work smarter and better. — Barack Obama

Racism doesn't have to fit our stereotypes for what it is in order for it to hurt - but it also means that tools for dismantling the system don't have it fit our stereotype either. — Simon S. Tam

American citizens should not lose their constitutional rights because they lack the money to pay for them. — Bernard B. Kerik

We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer - our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation. — Barack Obama

Seeking of the truth should be not only part of the Justice Department and part of our judicial system, but also should be ... a goal of reporters today. — John Ensign

We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design. — Jacque Fresco

All we want is justice for John Crawford and everyone responsible for John Crawford's death should be held responsible, the criminal justice system refused to hold those accountable so the civil system must. — Michael Wright

Holy Prophet PBUH promulgated a justice system regardless of status of people, yet in Pak the powerful easily escapes. — Imran Khan

The relevant question is not whether back then a few extraordinary individuals could overcome a system strongly weighted against them or whether today an admittedly far greater number requiring far less talent can succeed. The real question is whether it's harder for the people in this audience to succeed be they extraordinary, average, or below average. If it is, and I think it obvious that it is, then that's untenable in a country that purports to provide equal opportunity for all. Now of course you'll dispute my claim that it is more difficult to succeed for them. You say the battle's over. I say not only is it not over but you yourself are stationed on the frontline of the battle and have been all these years. This room and the criminal justice system as a whole is the frontline. This is where modern-day segregation lives on. — Sergio De La Pava

The strength of the claims of formal justice, of obedience to system, clearly depend upon the substantive justice of institutions and the possibilities of their reform. — John Rawls

The first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world. — Walter Cronkite

For having been educated in a convent, she knew nothing of the customs or manners of the world; and found it difficult to understand that among a people piquing themselves on their liberty, it was the custom to shut a man up in perpetual confinement, to enable him to pay his debts. — Charlotte Turner Smith

I feel like there was justice. It was served through the legal system you know. Everything that I endured. It was all worth it. — Amber Frey

For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death. — James Frey

The reason I like the criminal justice system is there aren't Republican or Democrat victims or police officers or prosecutors. It's about respect for the rule of law! — Trey Gowdy

The only relevant side is that of the law and the Constitution. We do great injury to the integrity of the court system when we start speaking of sides and stop devoting ourselves to the pursuit of impartial justice. — Jon Kyl

No more self-defeating device could be discovered than the one society has developed in dealing with the criminal. It proclaims his career in such loud and dramatic forms that both he and the community accept the judgment as a fixed description. He becomes conscious of himself as a criminal, and the community expects him to live up to his reputation, and will not credit him if he does not live up to it. — Frank Tannenbaum