Us Justice System Quotes & Sayings

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

All of humanity is searching for truth, justice, and beauty. We are on an eternal search for the truth because we only believe in the lies we have stored in our mind. We are searching for justice because in the belief system we have, there is no justice. We search for beauty because it doesn't matter how beautiful a person is, we don't believe that person has beauty. We keep searching and searching, when everything is already within us. There is no truth to find. — Miguel Ruiz

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

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

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

Prayer that works is prayer that makes a difference, contemplation that turns into action, on behalf of peace and justice in a troubled and unjust world system. Prayer is energy, the energy of love and transformative power. It is given to us to use for the good of all creation. In prayer God gives us the fuel of life, and asks us to live it. — Margaret Silf

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 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

I never thought that the word RAPE will appear in my life because a woman I deeply care about is raped.

~ Taz — Kirtida Gautam

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

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

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

I don't think it's necessary to feel guilty. Because I know that I'm still doing the work that is going to help more sisters and brothers to challenge the whole criminal justice system, and I'm trying to use whatever knowledge I was able to acquire to continue to do the work in our communities that will move us forward. — Angela Davis

The fact is, the primary way that Ottawa and Washington deal with Native people is to ignore us. They know that the court system favors the powerful and the wealthy and the influential, and that, if we buy into the notion of an impartial justice system, tribes and bands can be forced through a long, convoluted, and expensive process designed to wear us down and bankrupt our economies.
Be good. Play by our rules. Don't cause a disturbance. — Thomas King

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 have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hungers on us, and now we hunger for justice. — Cesar Chavez

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

Why does everyone take for granted that we don't learn to grow arms, but rather, are designed to grow arms? Similarly, we should conclude that in the case of the development of moral systems; there's a biological endowment which in effect requires us to develop a system of moral judgment and a theory of justice, if you like, that in fact has detailed applicability over an enormous range. — Noam Chomsky

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

No one expected to be safe until this century, if you read a little history. Think of the thousands of years before- years with no law, when the sword ruled. No widespread system of justice; no immunizations against disease. The local lord free to kill the husbands, husbands free to rape and kill their wives. Childbirth often fatal. No antibiotics. It's only here and now that women are raised believing they'll be safe. And it serves us false. It's not true. It dulls our sense of fear, which saves our lives. — Charlaine Harris

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

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

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

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. — Paul Beatty

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

Legal ethics is a misnomer ... lawyers conducting themselves legally are not necessarily conducting themselves morally ." ... and ... "The zero sum nature of the legal system, combined with the universal adoption of zealotry as the marching orders of practioners and prosecutors, transforms the moral mission of the legal system from one of truth-seeking, storytelling, and justice, to one of fabrication, distortion, and manipulation in pursuit of victory. These victories, however, make us all losers. — Thane Rosenbaum

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

Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself. — Sam Harris

Bring on those tired, labor-plagued, competition-weary companies and ESOP will breathe new life into them. They will find ESOP better than Geritol. It will revitalize what is wrong with capitalism. It will increase productivity. It will improve labor relations. It will promote economic justice. It will save the economic system. It will make our form of government and our concept of freedom prevail over those who don't agree with us. — Russell B. Long

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

Hard edges make truth and by necessity, truth is unbending. Unlike truth's absolutism, justice is a qualitative substance; it is not an absolute tenet. Justice must be pliable in order to meet the needs of more than one person or one group. Justice goes against separation; it is a form of human superglue. Justice is what binds us as people. No human is capable of measuring out or dispensing unqualified justice. Justice naturally seeks conciliation and demands compromise. — Kilroy J. Oldster

This system of discrimination, an inculcated double standard, may vary in content from culture to culture, but it is always unjust. There are thousands of kinds of injustice but there is only one kind of justice - equal justice for all. To call for a little more justice, or a moderately gradual sort of justice, is to call for no justice. That is a simple truth. — John Howard Griffin

I've never seen a single demonstration in Pakistan, in the streets of Gaza, in the West Bank, in which the people have come out with signs saying, "Please give us better roads. Please give us new prenatal clinics. Please give us a new sewage system." I'm sure they'd like those things, but it's not what they demand in the demonstrations. In the demonstrations, they talk about justice, they talk about an end to Israeli occupation. — Robert Fisk

Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter's case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. — Bryan Stevenson

We have a system of justice in [the US] that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes. — Bryan Stevenson

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

We have a racially based justice system that overpunishes, fails to rehabilitate, and doesn't make us safer. — Piper Kerman

Justice Lewis Powell spoke for all of us when he said: Equal justice under law is perhaps the most inspiring idea of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists. — Edward Kennedy

We like to say that India has the advantage of being a large market. We have provinces, we have the rule of law, we have a system of justice. But those are also weaknesses when compared with China. On the other hand, one of our strengths is that we are very individualistic, and as individuals we are very creative. But that, too, is a weakness, because it keeps us from working well together. Everyone thinks only about his own profit. — Ratan Tata

As Dr. King said, an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. It is that creed of the civil rights movement that still motivates us today ... So today, we take up the cause of joining arms with our immigrant brothers and sisters in that spirit ... to lend a hand to those who confront injustice as a result of a broken immigration system. — Steven Horsford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where there are drones, there will always be police. Where there are police, there will always be violence. — Ian McDonald

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

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

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

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

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