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Law

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The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. ~ Anatole France

Law is a term referring to sociological or scientific norms, or established systems of expression based upon them. In social or political terms, the rule of law refers to a system of rules created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior.

A

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An unjust law is no law at all. ~ Augustine of Hippo
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that 'if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression', human rights should be protected by the rule of law. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi
  • The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.
    • Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990).
  • A government of laws and not of men.
    • John Adams, "Novanglus Papers", no. 7. Reported in Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams (1851), vol. 4, p. 106. Adams published articles in 1774 in the Boston, Massachusetts, Gazette using the pseudonym "Novanglus". In this paper he credited James Harrington with expressing the idea this way. Harrington described government as "the empire of laws and not of men" in his 1656 work, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1771), p. 35. The phrase gained wider currency when Adams used it in the Massachusetts Constitution, Bill of Rights, article 30 (1780). The Works of John Adams (1851), vol. 4, p. 230.
  • One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.
  • Law is a Bottomless-Pit, it is a Cormorant, a Harpy, that devours every thing.
    • John Arbuthnot, in Alan W. Bower and Robert A. Erickson, eds., The History of John Bull (1976 [first published in 1712]), chapter 6, p. 10.
  • Law is order, and good law is good order.
  • Surely we will not dare say that these laws are unjust, or rather, that they are not laws at all. For it seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.
  • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that 'if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression', human rights should be protected by the rule of law. That just laws which uphold human rights are the necessary foundation of peace and security would be denied only by closed minds which interpret peace as the silence of all opposition and security as the assurance of their own power.

B

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When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. ~ Frédéric Bastiat
A nation that will not enforce its laws has no claim to the respect and allegiance of its people. ~ Ambrose Bierce
If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy. ~ Louis Brandeis
Laws, like houses, lean on one another. ~ Edmund Burke
  • All those which have written of laws, have written either as philosophers or as lawyers, and none as statesmen. As for the philosophers, they make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths; and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high. For the lawyers, they write according to the states where they live what is received law, and not what ought to be law: for the wisdom of a lawmaker is one, and of a lawyer is another.
    • Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning (1605), Works, III, p. 475
  • It was a thing not to be done suddenly nor at one Parliament; nor scarce a whole year would suffice, to purge the statute-book nor lessen the volume of laws;-being so many in number that neither common people can half practise them, nor the lawyer sufficiently understand them.
    • Francis Bacon, recommending "an abridgment of the laws and statutes of the realm," Speech to Parliament, 1593, in The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, p. 214
  • La loi est bonne, elle est nécessaire, l'exécution en est mauvaise, et les mœurs jugent les lois d'après la manière dont elles s'exécutent.
    • The law is good, it is necessary, its execution is poor, and the manners judge the laws based on the manner in which they are executed.
      • Honoré de Balzac, Splendeurs et Misères des courtisanes (1838-1847), part 3, Où mènent les mauvais chemins (The Ends of Evil Ways), "Ce qu'est un juge d'instruction pour ceux qui n'en ont pas" ("What a Judge Is for Those Who Do Not Have One") (title of the chapter).
  • Lorsque la Spoliation est devenue le moyen d’existence d’une agglomération d’hommes unis entre eux par le lien social, ils se font bientôt une loi qui la sanctionne, une morale qui la glorifie.
    • When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
      • Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, 2nd series (1848), ch. 1 Physiology of plunder ("Sophismes économiques", 2ème série (1848), chap. 1 "Physiologie de la spoliation").
  • You would oppose law to socialism. But it is the law which socialism invokes. It aspires to legal, not extra-legal plunder…. You wish to prevent it from taking any part in the making of laws. You would keep it outside the Legislative Palace. In this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal plunder is the basis of the legislation within.

    It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be determined, and there are only three solutions of it:—

    1. When the few plunder the many.
    2. When everybody plunders everybody else.
    3. When nobody plunders anybody.
    Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we have to make our choice. The law can only produce one of these results.
    Partial plunder.—This is the system which prevailed so long as the elective privilege was partial; a system which is resorted to, to avoid the invasion of socialism.

    Universal plunder.—We have been threatened by this system when the elective privilege has become universal; the masses having conceived the idea of making law, on the principle of legislators who had preceded them.

    Absence of plunder.—This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, conciliation, and of good sense.
  • Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
  • Any law that takes hold of a man's daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.
    • Henry Ward Beecher, "Civil Law and the Sabbath" (sermon delivered December 3, 1882); reported in Plymouth Pulpit (1883), vol. 5 (new series), p. 416.
  • When laws, customs, or institutions cease to be beneficial to man, they cease to be obligatory.
  • The Invariability of Law. That we live in a realm of law, that we arc surrounded by laws that we cannot break, this is a truism. Yet when the fact is recognised in a real and vital way, and when it is seen to be a fact in the mental and moral world as much as in the physical, a certain sense of helplessness is apt to overpower us, as though we felt ourselves in the grip of some mighty Power, that, seizing us, whirls us away whither it will. The very reverse of this is in reality the case, for the mighty Power, when it is understood, will obediently carry us whither we will; all forces in Nature can be used in proportion as they are understood “Nature is conquered by obedience ” — and her resistless energies are at our bidding as soon as we, by knowledge, work with them and not against them. We can choose out of her boundless stores the forces that serve our purpose in momentum, in direction, and so on, and their very invariability becomes the guarantee of our success. p. 6
  • On the invariability of law depend the security of scientific experiment, and all power of planning a result and of predicting the future. On this the chemist rests, sure that Nature will ever respond in the same way, if he be precise in putting his questions. A variation in his results is taken by him as implying a change in his procedure, not a change in Nature. And so with all human action; the more it is based on knowledge, the more secure is it in its forecastings, for all “accident" is the result of ignorance, and is due to the working of laws whose presence was unknown or overlooked. In the mental and moral worlds, as much as in the physical, results can be foreseen, planned for, calculated on. Nature never betrays us; we are betrayed by our own blindness. p. 7
  • That law should be as invariable in the mental and moral worlds as in the physical is to be expected, since the universe is the emanation of the One, and what we call Law is but the expression of the Divine Nature. As there is one Lite emanating all, so there is one Law sustaining all ; the worlds rest on this rock of the Divine Nature as on a secure, immutable foundation. p.7
  • This assurance that perfect Justice rules the world finds support from the increasing knowledge of the evolving Soul; for as it advances and begins to see on higher planes and to transmit its knowledge to the waking consciousness, we learn with ever-growing certainty, and therefore with ever-increasing joy, that the Good Law is working with undeviating accuracy, that its Agents apply it everywhere with unerring insight, with unfailing strength, and that all is therefore very well with the world and with its struggling Souls.
    • Annie Besant, Theosophical Manuals No IV: Karma, by Annie Besant (1895)
  • Such is an outline of the great Law of Karma and of its workings, by a knowledge of which a man may accelerate his evolution, by the utilization of which a man may free himself from bondage, and become, long ere his race has trodden its course, one of the Helpers and Saviours of the World. A deep and steady conviction of the truth of this Law gives to life an immovable serenity and a perfect fearlessness: nothing can touch us that we have not wrought, nothing can injure us that we have not merited. And as everything that we have sown must ripen into harvest in due season, and must be reaped, it is idle to lament over the reaping when it is painful; it may as well be done now as at any future time, since it cannot be evaded, and, once done, it cannot return to trouble us again.
  • Ere man could know what was right, he had to learn the existence of the law, and this he could only learn by following all that attracted him in the outer world, by grasping every desirable object, and then by learning from experience, sweet or bitter, whether his delight was in harmony or in conflict with the law. Let us take an obvious example, the taking of pleasant food, and see how infant man might learn there from the presence of a natural law. At the first taking, his hunger was appeased, his taste was gratified, and only pleasure resulted from the experience, for his action was in harmony with law. On another occasion, desiring to increase pleasure, he ate overmuch and suffered in consequence, for he transgressed against the law. A confusing experience to the dawning intelligence, how the pleasurable became painful by excess.
  • Over and over again he would be led by desire into excess, and each time he would experience the painful consequences, until at last he learned moderation, i.e., he learned to conform his bodily acts in this respect to physical law; for he found that there were conditions which affected him and which he could not control, and that only by observing them could physical happiness be insured. Similar experiences flowed in upon him through all the bodily organs, with undeviating regularity; his outrushing desires brought him pleasure or pain just as they worked with the laws of Nature or against them, and, as experience increased, it began to guide his steps, to influence his choice. It was not as though he had to begin his experience anew with every life, for on each new birth he brought with him mental faculties a little increased, and ever-accumulating store.
  • A nation that will not enforce its laws has no claim to the respect and allegiance of its people.
    • Ambrose Bierce. 'Industrial Discontent', The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays (1909).
  • [L]aw neither reflects nor distorts a social world of subjects that exists independent of it. Instead, law helps compose the social world.
    • Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg, “Cultural Criticism of Law”, “Stanford Law Review 49 (1997): 1152; as quoted in Thomas R. Kearns (August 2002). “History, Memory, and the Law”. University of Michigan Press. Footnote 8, p.3
  • The law is not a "light" for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which so long as he keeps to it a citizen may walk safely.
    • Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (1967), act II, p. 92. Sir Thomas More is speaking.
  • Wo wir unfähig sind, die Gesetze der Notwendigkeit zu erkennen, da glauben wir, frei zu sein.
    • When we are incapable of recognizing the laws of necessity, we believe ourselves to be free.
      • Ludwig Börne, as quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary, p. 16.
        • Variant translation: Wherever it is impossible for us to recognize the law of necessity, we believe we are free.
  • [N]o law, written or unwritten, can be understood without a full knowledge of the facts out of which it arises, and to which it is to be applied.
    • Justice Louis Brandeis The Living Law, 10 Illinois Law Review 461, 467 (1915-16).
  • The law is simply and solely made for the exploitation of those who do not understand it or of those who, for naked need, cannot obey it.
    • Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera Act 3, scene 1, p. 74, character of Polly Peachum
  • As in elections, the law pretended universal rights, while securing the interests of powerful houses.
  • Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
    • Edmund Burke, From the Tracts Relative to the Laws Against Popery in Ireland (c. 1766), not published during Burke's lifetime.
  • Our wrangling lawyers ... are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter, some of them in hell.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus to the Reader.
  • Is not the winding up witnesses,
    And nicking, more than half the bus'ness?
    For witnesses, like watches, go
    Just as they're set, too fast or slow;
    And where in Conscience they're strait-lac'd,
    'Tis ten to one that side is cast.

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True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrong-doing by its prohibitions. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation. ~ Calvin Coolidge
  • An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.
    • J. Chase, writing the opinion in Norton vs. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425, p. 442.
  • A world contrary to God must be kept within bounds by the world’s sword. But true Christians love God and their neighbors as themselves; they commit no evil by the grace of God. It is not necessary to compel them to goodness since they know better what is good than the law imposing authority.
  • True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrong-doing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment.
    • Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Re Publica (The Republic), book 3, paragraph 22; in De Re Publica, De Legibus, trans. Clinton W. Keyes (1943), p. 211.
  • Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law.
  • Necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imagined necessities... are the greatest cozenage that men can put upon the Providence of God, and make pretenses to break known rules by.
    • Oliver Cromwell, in a speech to the First Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654).

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Laws are created to be followed
by the poor.
Laws are made by the rich
to bring some order to exploitation.
The poor are the only law abiders in history.
When the poor make laws
the rich will be no more.
~ Roque Dalton
Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity— by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
  • Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity — by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles.
    • Leonardo da Vinci, in speaking of the pupil of the eye in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. I, as translated by Jean Paul Richter (1888).
  • Las leyes son para que las cumplan
    los pobres.
    Las leyes son hechas por los ricos
    para poner un poco de orden a la explotación.
    Los pobres son los únicos cumplidores de leyes de la historia.
    Cuando los pobres hagan las leyes
    ya no habrá ricos    .
    • Laws are created to be followed
      by the poor.
      Laws are made by the rich
      to bring some order to exploitation.
      The poor are the only law abiders in history.
      When the poor make laws
      the rich will be no more.
  • Make every private Sentinel, every Musquetier, both Judge, Jury, and Executioner.
  • Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.
    • Declaration of the Rights of Man, France 1789, Fourth
  • "If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, "the law is a ass, a idiot." If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience".
    • Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (first published serially 1837–1839; 1970 edition), chapter 51, p. 489.
  • The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.
  • If it's near dinner time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury have retired and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else except two men who ought to have dined at three, and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch: "Well, gentlemen, what do we say? Plaintiff, defendant, gentlemen? I rather think so far as I am concerned, gentlemen — I say I rather think — but don't let that influence you — I rather think the plaintiff's the man." Upon this two or three other men are sure to say they think so too — as of course they do; and then they get on very unanimously and comfortably.
  • I know'd what 'ud come o' this here mode o' doin' business. Oh, Sammy, Sammy, vy worn't there a alleybi!
  • There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
  • I know it is said that marital alliance between these races is unnatural, abhorrent and impossible; but exclamations of this kind only shake the air. They prove nothing against a stubborn fact like that which confronts us daily and which is open to the observation of all. If this blending of the two races were impossible we should not have at least one-fourth of our colored population composed of persons of mixed blood, ranging all the way from a dark-brown color to the point where there is no visible admixture. Besides, it is obvious to common sense that there is no need of the passage of laws, or the adoption of other devices, to prevent what is in itself impossible.
  • We live in and by the law. It makes us what we are: citizens and employees and doctors and spouses and people who own things. It is sword, shield, and menace: we insist on our wage, or refuse to pay our rent, or are forced to forfeit penalties, or are closed up in jail, all in the name of what our abstract and ethereal sovereign, the law, has decreed. And we argue about what it has decreed, even when the books that are supposed to record its commands and directions are silent; we act then as if law had muttered its doom, too low to be heard distinctly. We are subjects of law's empire, liegemen to its methods and ideals, bound in spirit while we debate what we must therefore do.

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If a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. ~ Epicurus
  • They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
  • Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts.
  • * We look upon this shaken Earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails. The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard. And to attain it, we must be aware of its full meaning — and ready to pay its full price. We know clearly what we seek, and why. We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself. Yet this peace we seek cannot be born of fear alone: it must be rooted in the lives of nations. There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce. There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak. But the law of which we speak, comprehending the values of freedom, affirms the equality of all nations, great and small. Splendid as can be the blessings of such a peace, high will be its cost: in toil patiently sustained, in help honorably given, in sacrifice calmly borne.

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If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. ~ Felix Frankfurter
  • Let me make the ballads of a nation and I care not who makes its laws.
    • Variant from Andrew Fletcher, An Account of a Conversation Concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind, 1703
  • La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
    • In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
      • Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge [The Red Lily] (1894), ch. 7
        • Variant: How noble the law, in its majestic equality, that both the rich and poor are equally prohibited from peeing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread!
  • If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.
  • I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.
    • Stephen Fry, in his "Trefusis Blasphemes" radio broadcast, as published in Paperweight (1993).

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I believe that each era finds an improvement in law for the benefit of mankind. ~ Clarence Earl Gideon
Necessity knows no law but makes law. ~ Gratian
The deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future. For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is. ~ Neil Gorsuch
  • I believe that each era finds a [sic] improvement in law each year brings something new for the benefit of mankind. Maybe this will be one of those small steps forward, in the past thirty-five years I have seen great advancement in courts in penal servitude.
    • Clarence Earl Gideon, Letter from Clarence Earl Gideon to Abe Fortas (November 1962), page 22, Quoted in: Anthony Lewis, Gideon's Trumpet 65-78 (Vintage 1966) (1964), note 2 at page 78. Source: Jack King (2012): Clarence Earl Gideon: Unlikely World-Shaker. The Champion Issue June 2012 by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, page 58. Archived from the original on August 13, 2020.
  • 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.
  • The function of the lawyer is to preserve a sceptical relativism in a society hell-bent for absolutes. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In Hell there will be nothing but law and due process will be meticulously observed.
  • Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
  • The rule of law can be wiped out in one misguided, however well-intentioned generation. And if that should happen, it could take a century of striving and ordeal to restore it, and then only at the cost of the lives of many good men and women.
  • I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
  • For those who think it important for the Nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today’s decision will be disappointing. All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason. Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future. For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.

H

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The only law that a Christian should listen to and read is the law of God's Commandments. And it is not right to comply with, implement or observe any other law. ~ Jan Hus
  • The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.
  • The laws were very comical; to bet was voted lax,
    But your betting was the only thing that nobody could tax.
    • A. P. Herbert, Speech to Parliament, 1930s; as quoted in The Pendulum Years (1970) by Bernard Levin, p. 16.
  • The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.
  • The only law that a Christian should listen to and read is the law of God's Commandments. And it is not right to comply with, implement or observe any other law.
    • Jan Hus in Výklad viery, desatera a páteře (Interpretation of the Faith, the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer) as quoted in A Companion to Jan Hus (2015) by František Šmahel (ed.), pp. 231.

J

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The essence of our free Government is to be governed by those impersonal forces which we call law. The Executive, except for recommendation and veto, has no legislative power. With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations. ~ Robert H. Jackson
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. [...] But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. ~ Thomas Jefferson
The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed--and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson
  • I cannot be brought to believe that this country will suffer if the Court refuses further to aggrandize the presidential office, already so potent and so relatively immune from judicial review, at the expense of Congress.

    But I have no illusion that any decision by this Court can keep power in the hands of Congress if it is not wise and timely in meeting its problems. A crisis that challenges the President equally, or perhaps primarily, challenges Congress. If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that "The tools belong to the man who can use them." We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers.

    The essence of our free Government is "leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the law" -- to be governed by those impersonal forces which we call law.     Our Government is fashioned to fulfill this concept so far as humanly possible. The Executive, except for recommendation and veto, has no legislative power. The executive action we have here originates in the individual will of the President, and represents an exercise of authority without law. No one, perhaps not even the President, knows the limits of the power he may seek to exert in this instance, and the parties affected cannot learn the limit of their rights. We do not know today what powers over labor or property would be claimed to flow from Government possession if we should legalize it, what rights to compensation would be claimed or recognized, or on what contingency it would end. With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations. Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up.
    • Robert H. Jackson, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) (concurring), at 654-655.
      • See also: For those who think it important for the Nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today’s decision will be disappointing. All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason. Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future. For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.
      • Neil Gorsuch, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump', 607 U.S. ___ (2026) (concurring), slip opinion at page 46. Archived from the original at February 28, 2026.
  • I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs.
  • Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
  • The ruling powers tell us poor lower-class folks that we have an obligation, a social responsibility to society, to abide by the law, but they don’t have any social responsibility to us to help us meet our needs. It’s pure bourgeoisie class-based morality, a morality that serves the ruling class, not the masses of the oppressed.
    • Kevin Rashid Johnson, Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

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Law is one site to both “remember the future” and to insure that the future remembers. Perhaps by paying attention to how law serves memory we can gain new understandings of law’s crucial role in knitting together our past, present and future. Perhaps by attending to the contestation that inevitably accompanies efforts to materialize memory in law we can gain a better understanding of the ways that social conflict plays itself out on the terrain of remembrance. ~ Thomas R. Kearns
Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. ~ Anthony Kennedy
The most effective means of upholding the law is not the State policeman or the marshals or the National Guard. It is you. It lies in your courage to accept those laws with which you disagree as well as those with which you agree. ~