Law

I've never met a litigator who didn't think he was winning -- right up until the moment the guillotine dropped.
~ William F. Baxter, (8 January 1982)

For the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
~ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69).

Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.
~ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). Introduction, sect. 2: Of the Nature of Laws in General

So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community.
~ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69).

[T]he most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it; or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. For when this reason ceases, the law itself ought likewise to cease with it.
~ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). Introduction, sect. 2: Of the Nature of Laws in General

The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind.
~ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). Book I: Rights of Persons, Chapter 1: Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals

[T]hough in many other countries every thing is left in the breast of the judge to determine, yet with us he is only to declare and pronounce, not to make or new-model, the law
~ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). Book III: Of Private Wrongs, Chapter 22: Of the Several Species of Trail

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). A Memorable Fancy

But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (often quoted as "utterly without redeeming social value."), Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 484 (1957).

Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment. . . .
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr.

Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr.

The Constitution was framed fundamentally as a bulwark against governmental power, and preventing the arbitrary administration of punishment is a basic ideal of any society that purports to be governed by the rule of law.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (dissenting opinion), Mccleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987).

The Establishment Clause does not license government to treat religious people, or religious practices, as if they are subversive to American ideals, and therefore, subject to unique disabilities.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr., ACLU v. Charity

The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends. It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr.

We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. What the constitutional fundamentals meant to the wisdom of other times cannot be their measure to the vision of our time. Similarly, what those fundamentals mean for us, our descendants will learn, cannot be the measure to the vision of their time.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr., Address to the Text and Teaching Symposium. Georgetown University, Washington DC (12 October 1985). The Constitution of the United States: Contemporary Ratification

General rules based on individual victims are unwise.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr., in National Review (29 June 2004). Free Weeds

A functioning police state needs no police.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (1959).

Today, the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury.
~ William J. Campbell

A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order. And a great many people are worried about justice. But one thing is certain; you cannot have either until you have both.
~ (William) Ramsey Clark, The David Frost Show.

Then shifting his side (as a lawyer knows how),
He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes:
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the court did not think they were equally wise.
~ William Cowper, Report of an Adjudged Case

[A] lifetime diet of the law alone turns most judges into dull, dry husks.
~ William Orville Douglas, Go East, Young Man (1974).

I can see you've done a lot of work, but you are off base here. If and when you get appointed to the Supreme Court you can write opinions as you choose.
~ William Orville Douglas (said to a errant law clerk)

One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the 1st Amendment.
~ William Orville Douglas

It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.
~ William Orville Douglas

That seems to us to be the common sense of the matter; and common sense often makes good law.
~ William Orville Douglas, Peak v. United States, 353 U.S. 43 (1957)

The 5th Amendment is an old friend and a good friend . . . one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.
~ William Orville Douglas, An Almanac of Liberty (1954).

The Constitution favors no racial group, no political or social group.
~ William Orville Douglas (dissenting opinion), Uphaus v. Wyman, 364 U.S. 388 (1960).

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
~ William Orville Douglas

The function of the prosecutor under the federal Constitution is not to tack as many skins of victims as possible against the wall. His function is to vindicate the rights of the people as expressed in the laws and give those accused of crime a fair trial.
~ William Orville Douglas

There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs. If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring of our laws is essential.
~ William Orville Douglas, Points of Rebellion (1969). A Start Towards Reconstructing Our Society

We do not sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.
~ William Orville Douglas

We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.
~ William Orville Douglas (dissenting opinion), Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104 (1972)

When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.
~ William Orville Douglas

Man has been able to profit by his knowledge of nature's laws, but he has not overcome them.
~ William Curtis Farabee, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 56, No. 3 (1917). The South American Indian in His Relation to Geographic Environment

Justice? -- You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.
~ William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994).

Nah, nah, nah. There's no rules. Show me the rule book.
~ Liam Gallagher

A trial is a search for the Truth. A lawsuit is not a game for sharp advantage.
~ William Jay Gaynor

For now I am a Judge,
And a good Judge too.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert

The Law is the true embodiment
Of everything that's excellent.
It has no kind of fault or flaw,
And I, my lords, embody the Law.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, Iolanthe (1882 opera).

Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.
~ William Ewart Gladstone

The rule of law can be wiped out in one misguided, however well-intentioned, generation.
~ William T. Gossett, Address (11 August 1969).

[T]he law of mind, that the conceivable is in every relation bounded by the inconceivable, I call the Law of the Conditioned.
~ Sir William Hamilton, from Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60).

Rules are made to be broken, so there won't be any rules.
~ William Jennings Bryan ("Billy") Herman

And sov'reign LAW, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate
Sits Empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
~ Sir William Jones, An Ode in Imitation of Alcaeus (1781)

[T]he only road to the highest stations in this country is that of the law.
~ Sir William Jones, in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence, of Sir William Jones (1804). Letter to C. Reviczki (March 1771)

The law is like rope . . . useful, necessary, strong, but it can be bent and twisted into all kinds of shapes depending on the occasion.
~ William Patrick (W.P.) Kinsella

The real national disease in the United States is not RSI [Repetitive Strain Injuries] but the ongoing quest to blame your problems on other people and to use the body of law to make them pay through their noses for your misery, misfortune, or stupidity.
~ Bill Machrone, in PC Magazine Pigs, Ducks, and RSI (17 May 1994)

Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915).

However harmless a thing is, if the law forbids it most people will think it wrong.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages.
~ William H. (Bill) Mauldin, Up Front (1945).

Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice.
~ William McIlvanney, Laidlaw (1977).

Laws are made for us; we are not made for the laws.
~ William Milonoff

New laws aren't needed to deal with people being irresponsible with raves, because there are already enough laws on the statute books to deal with that. They're there to keep control of the elements in society they're afraid of.
~ William Orbit, Record Mirror (2 June 1990). Just William

Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the laws rule, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.
~ William Penn, Frame of Government of Pennsylvania (5 May 1682). The Preface

Your lawyer in practice spends a considerable part of his life in doing distasteful things for disagreeable people who must be satisfied against an impossible time limit in which are hourly interruptions from other disagreeable people who want to derail the train; and for his blood, sweat, and tears, he receives in the end a few unkind words to the effect that it might have been done better, and a protest at the size of the fee.
~ William L. Prossner

A judge must respect final decisions of other judges, even when he thinks they are wrong. No judge is above the law.
~ (Alabama Attorney General) Bill Pryor, (13 November 2003).

This case presents an all-or-nothing proposition. Either the chief justice is wrong and must be removed, or the chief justice is right and must be reinstated. . . . What does it mean to have the rule of laws and not of men? That is the fundamental question.
~ (Alabama Attorney General) Bill Pryor, Trial before the Court of the Judiciary, Montgomery, AL (12 November 2003). Complaint In the Matter of Roy S. Moore, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

A judge must respect final decisions of other judges, even when he thinks they are wrong. No judge is above the law.
~ (Alabama Attorney General) Bill Pryor, (13 November 2003).

But the greatest injury of the 'wall' notion is its mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. . . . The "wall of separation between church and state" is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.
~ William H. Rehnquist (dissenting opinion), Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1984).

It is truly surprising that the state must assign a greater value to a mother's decision to cut off a potential human life by abortion than to a father's decision to let it mature into a live child.
~ William H. Rehnquist

Just like taking a good photograph or painting a picture or playing a good golf game or something, it's the thing in itself that justifies it.
~ William H. Rehnquist, in C-SPAN TV Booknotes (5 July 1992).

The American judicial system is admired throughout the world.
~ William H. Rehnquist, Statement submitted to the National Commission on the Public Service (15 July 2002).

The Supreme Court is an institution far more dominated by centrifugal forces, pushing toward individuality and independence, than it is by centripetal forces pulling for hierarchical ordering and institutional unity.
~ William H. Rehnquist

Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.
~ Will Rogers

The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing.
~ Will Rogers

It is obvious that "obscenity" is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means "anything that shocks the magistrate."
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, from Sceptical Essays (1928). The Recrudescence of Puritanism

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, in Look, New York (23 February 1954).

The criminal suit is open to every one, the civil suit to every one showing an interest.
~ Sir William Scott, in Turner v. Meyers (1804).

To vindicate the policy of the law is no necessary part of the office of a Judge.
~ Sir William Scott, in Evans v. Evans, I Hagg. 35 (1790).

It is in the advantageous position of being able not only to declare constitutional acts unconstitutional, but unconstitutional acts constitutional.
~ William Seagle (of the U.S. Supreme Court)

This is the law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
~ Robert William Service, The Law of the Yukon (1907).

The Constitution devotes the national domain to union, to justice, to defence, to welfare and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the Constitution.
~ William Henry Seward, Speech in the U.S. Senate (11 March 1850).

And do as adversaries do in law, --
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
~ William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

He arrests him on it;
And follows close the rigour of the statute,
To make him an example.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

I have been a truant in the law,
And never yet could frame my will to it;
And therefore frame the law unto my will.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I. Act II, scene iv

I have not kept the square, but that to come
Shall all be done by the rule.
~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Act II, scene iii

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But being season'd with a gracious voice
Obscures the show of evil?
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Kings are earth's gods; in vice their law's their will.
~ William Shakespeare, Pericles. Act I, scene i

Still you keep o' the windy side of the law.
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part II. Act IV, scene ii

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure. Act II, scene ii

These are my mates, that make their wills their law.
~ William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act V, scene iv

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act V, scene i

Wrest once the law to your authority:
To do a great right, do a little wrong.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch, therefore bear you the lantern.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Act III, scene iii

Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break though, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in.
~ William Shenstone

Our legal system suffers from a pair of diseases, to seemingly opposite blindnesses. It thinks too well of its regulatory capacity, and too poorly of its capacity for moral leadership. It takes too exalted a view of of the ability of smart people to order the world to their liking, and too dim a view of the extent and importance of sin.
~ William J. Stuntz, The Washington Post (28 February 1997).

In this case, the chief justice exhausted all of his legal remedies and was unsuccessful to stay the injunction issued by the federal district court. In defying that court order, the chief justice placed himself above the law.
~ (Judge) William C. Thompson, Alabama Court of the Judiciary Final Judgment, Montgomery, AL (13 November 2003). Case No. 33: In the Matter of Roy S. Moore, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

There is no penalty short of removal from office that would resolve this issue. Anything short of removal would only serve to set up another confrontation that would ultimately bring us back to where we are today.
~ (Judge) William C. Thompson, Alabama Court of the Judiciary Final Judgment, Montgomery, AL (13 November 2003). Case No. 33: In the Matter of Roy S. Moore, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

Our court dockets are so crowded today it would be better to refer to it as the overdue process of law.
~ William E. "Bill" Vaughan

I try not to break the rules, but merely to test their elasticity.
~ Bill Veeck, Jr.

Through their judicial decisions, black-robed judges have put religion in serious trouble in the land of the free.
~ William D. Watkins, The New Absolutes (1996).

Look in; and learn the wrong, and right,
From your own soul's unwritten laws.
And when you question, or demur,
Let Love be your Interpreter.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1906). Assistance

There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance.
~ William's Law

Shakespeare said, "Kill all the lawyers." There were no agents then.
~ Robin Williams

Nazis, or totalitarians always work by incrementalism, they take a little bit at a time.
~ Walter E. Williams, commenting on restrictive tobacco legislation, Rush Limbaugh radio show (23 November 2001)

Reduced employment opportunities is one effect of minimum wage legislation. The minimum wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the disadvantaged members of our society. The only moral thing to do is to repeal it.
~ Walter E. Williams

Consilience holds that nature is organised by simple universal laws of physics to which all other laws and principles can eventually be reduced.
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998).

Someboy figured it out -- we have 35 million laws trying to enforce Ten Commandments.
~ Earl Wilson

And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes (1807). Character of the Happy Warrior

Once you attempt legislation on religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and for every kind of religious persecution.
~ William Butler Yeats, Speech Before The Senate of Ireland On Divorce (11 June 1925).

Laws and police regulations can be compared to a spider's web that lets the big mosquitoes through and catches the small ones.
~ Julius Wilhelm Zincgref, Apophthegmata (1631).