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QUOTATIONS "The most
overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there's
no law against wacking them around a little."
- Porterfield
"And it should
be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary
says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions."
- David Jones
@ Megatest Corporation
 "We dedicated
ourselves to a powerful idea -- organic law rather than naked power. There
seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation."
- Supreme Court
Justice Potter Stewart
"So act that
your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world."
- Immanuel Kant
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 "A
judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers."
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"A jury consists
of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."
- Robert
Frost
 "My fellow
Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws
Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes."
- Ronald
Reagan, Radio test,1984
"Lawyers,
I suppose, were children once."
- Charles Lamb
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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
" IN
FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of
a poor person -- a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers
is considerately permitted to lose his case. When Adam long ago in Cupid's
awful court (for Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented) sued for Eve's favor,
says an ancient law report, He stood and pleaded unhabilimented. "You sue
_in forma pauperis_, I see," Eve cried; "Actions can't here be that way
prosecuted." So all poor Adam's motions coldly were denied: He went away
-- as he had come -- nonsuited. G.J."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), "The Devil's Dictionary",
1911
"The
reason there is so little crime in Germany is that it's against the law."
- Alex
Levin
"Be still
when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what
you've got to say, and say it hot."
- D. H. Lawrence
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"Discourage
litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As
a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There
will still be business enough."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Where there
is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the
least of real liberty."
- Henry M. Robert
 "No law or
ordinance is mightier than understanding." -
Plato,
Laws
"The judge
ought to give 'em a chance to tell what evolution is. Course we got them
licked anyhow, but I believe in being fair and square and American. Besides,
I'd like to know what evolution is myself."
- Tennessee State Representative
John Washington Butler, author of the Tennessee Anti-
Evolution Law, during the Scopes Monkey Trial
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LL.D.
Letters indicating the degree _Legumptionorum Doctor_, one learned in laws,
gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast upon this derivation
by the fact that the title was formerly _LL.d._, and conferred only upon
gentlemen distinguished for their wealth.
- Ambrose Bierce
(1842-1914), "The Devil's Dictionary",
1911
"The lawgiver,
of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave
as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind
that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own."
- H.G. Wells
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"Plant a
kernel of wheat and you reap a pint; plant a pint and you reap a bushel.
Always the law works to give you back more than you give."
- Anthony Norvell
"May you
have a lawsuit in which you know you are in the right"
- Gypsy Proverb
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PRECEDENT,
n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence
of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge may choose
to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he pleases.
As there are precedents for everything, he has only to ignore those that
make against his interest and accentuate those in the line of his desire.
Invention of the precedent elevates the trial-at-law from the low estate
of a fortuitous ordeal to the noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.
- Ambrose Bierce
(1842-1914)
..................
"The Devil's Dictionary",
1911
"The grandest
of
all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep
of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better."
- John Christian Bovee
"When you
can, always advise people to do what you see they really want to do, so
long as what they want isn't dangerously unlawful, stupidly unsociable
or obviously impossible. Doing what they want to do, they may succeed;
doing what they don't want to do, they won't."
- James G. Cozzens
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"Thoughts,
like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody."
- Stanislaw
Lec
PRECEDENT: From
The Lunarian Astonished_ -- Pfeiffer
& Co., Boston, 1803: LUNARIAN: Then when your Congress has passed
a law it goes directly to the Supreme Court in order that it may at once
be known whether it is constitutional? TERRESTRIAN: Oh no; it does not
require the approval of the Supreme Court until having perhaps been enforced
for many years somebody objects to its operation against himself -- I mean
his client. The President, if he approves it, begins to execute it at once.
LUNARIAN: Ah, the executive power is a part of the legislative. Do your
policemen also have to approve the local ordinances that they enforce?
TERRESTRIAN: Not yet -- at least not in their character of constables.
Generally speaking, though, all laws require the approval of those whom
they are intended to restrain. LUNARIAN: I see. The death warrant is not
valid until signed by the murderer. TERRESTRIAN: My friend, you put it
too strongly; we are not so consistent. LUNARIAN: But this system of maintaining
an expensive judicial machinery to pass upon the validity of laws only
after they have long been executed, and then only when brought before the
court by some private person -- does it not cause great confusion? TERRESTRIAN:
It does. LUNARIAN: Why then should not your laws, previously to being executed,
be validated, not by the signature of your President, but by that of the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? TERRESTRIAN: There is no precedent
for any such course. LUNARIAN: Precedent. What is that? TERRESTRIAN: It
has been defined by five hundred lawyers in three volumes each. So how
can any one know?-Ambrose
Bierce
(1842-1914)
..................
"The Devil's Dictionary",
1911
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The
trouble with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase
it.
- Glaser
and Way
 HOMICIDE,
n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide:
felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great
difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another --
the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.
- Ambrose Bierce
(1842-1914)
..................
"The Devil's Dictionary",
1911
A verbal
contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
- Samuel Goldwyn's
Law of Contracts
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"We want
to see three things in the 1988 Republican Party Platform... First, a constitutional
amendment banning all abortions in the United States. Second, increased
funding for law enforcement and a mandatory death penalty for drug dealers.
Third, LESS GOVERNMENT."
- Speaker at a
1988 Republican Straw Poll in Iowa
Lawsuit (noun)
-- A machine which you go into as a pig and come out as a sausage.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
 Harry is
heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us all
go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for its
wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs romantic
notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any wild
horses in person. In person, they are like enormous hooved rats. They amble
up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're
going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're
protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon."
- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob":
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Our
second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell
Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like
about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets
handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it on his legal
stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what a lesser person
would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
"The sins
of the fathers are often visited upon the sons-in-law."
- Joan Kiser
"In university
they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate
fools."
- Doris Lessing
"While technically
I did not commit a crime, an impeachable offense... these are legalisms,
as far as the handling of this matter is concerned; it was so botched up,
I made so many bad judgments. The worst ones, mistakes of the heart, rather
than the head. But let me say, a man in that top job - he's got to have
a heart, but his head must always rule his heart."
-- Richard Nixon
"When the
president does it, that means it is not illegal."
- Richard Nixon
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I followed
his argument with the blank uneasiness which one might feel in the presence
of a
logical
lunatic.
- Victor Serge
Listening
to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.
- Donald Rumsfeld
Reason is
the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason.
--
Coke
Law is beneficence
acting by rule.
- Burke
And sovereign
Law, that state's collected will O'er thrones and globes elate, Sits empress,
crowning good, repressing ill.
- Sir W. Jones
He found
law dear and left it cheap.
-- Brougham
"There is
nothing which so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections
of mankind, as the right of property."
- William Blackstone, Book
II, "Rights of Things", Commentaries on the Laws of England.
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Emergency
does not create power. Emergency does not increase granted power or remove
or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The
Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of
power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the
States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered
by emergency. What power was thus granted and what limitations were thus
imposed are questions [290 U.S. 398, 426]which have always been, and always
will be, the subject of close examination under our constitutional system.
HOME BLDG. & LOAN ASS'N v. BLAISDELL, 290 U.S. 398 (1934)
- Mr. Chief Justice Hughes
Long wind
hasn't given out on this side any more than on yours, nor so much, though
the tendency is towards shorter opinions. I abhor, loathe and despise these
long discourses, and agree with Carducci the Italian poet who died some
years ago that a man who takes half a page to say what can be said in a
sentence will be damned.
- Mr. Justice Holmes (June
1, 1917). Correspondence, 1874-1932
No doubt
one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil
quotes scripture.
- Learned Hand, Sources of Tolerance (1930), p.79.f
The
great object of the law is to encourage commerce.
-
Judge Chambre (1739-1823) Beale v. Thompson, 1803
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I
always think of the Frenchman's answer when he was asked if a
gentleman must know of
Greek & Latin:
"No,
but he must have
forgotten them."
- Mr. Justice Holmes (April 15, 1892).
Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes & Sir
Frederick Pollock, 1874-1932.
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Short Latin Phrases
Frequently 