Top 100 Law Court Quotes
#1. Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong ... And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.
Plato
#2. They questioned us but they were polite because we had passports and money. I do not think they believed a word of the story and I thought it was silly but it was like a law-court. You did not want something reasonable, you wanted something technical and then stuck to it without explanations.
Ernest Hemingway,
#3. It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses.
Florynce Kennedy
#5. As a citizen and someone who was a judge on the constitutional law court for 18 years, I feel whenever I can raise my voice with the hope of being heard I need to do it, but I wouldn't assign a special wisdom and responsibility to writers.
Bernhard Schlink
#6. It is impossible to pursue happiness. Nobody has ever pursued it. One has to wait for it. And it is not a right at all. No law court can force you to be happy or force happiness to be with you. No government violence is capable of making you happy. No power can make you happy ...
Rajneesh
#7. It lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.
Learned Hand
#8. As the law minister, I had ensured that the government's right to natural resources was protected. The result was evident. The honourable Supreme Court gave the landmark decision in RIL vs RNRL case that the government is the owner of all natural resources.
Veerappa Moily
#9. The verdict of this court is that the accused are guilty of witchcraft. The maximum penalty the law allows is to be burned to death.However, in view of your previous good background I am disposed to be lenient. I therefore sentence you to be burned alive.
Richard Curtis
#10. I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.
Robert Bork
#11. The law is an artificial human construct, quite arbitrary, and of absolutely no use anywhere else but in a court of law!
John Quincy Adams
#12. All we can do is keep going up against then as long as Ray is alive because when he dies it will not be possible to establish the truth of his innocence in a court of law.
William Pepper
#13. It was, however, resolved that 'we use our private influence at present to prevent our brethren from going into court and promising to obey the law; and as soon as possible we take steps to get some flavors from the government for those who already have more wives than one.'
Abraham H. Cannon
#14. It's a matter of balance of power. If the Supreme Court could just make a ruling and everybody has to bow down and fall on their faces and worship that law, it isn't a law because it hasn't been yet passed.
Mike Huckabee
#15. I recalled my father-in-law's aphorism "To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom ... " & I pretended to extract a speck from my eye.
David Mitchell
#16. No matter what eyewitness testimony is in the court of law, it is the lowest form of evidence in the court of science.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#17. Supreme Court nominees should know without any doubt that their job is not to impose their own personal opinions of what is right and wrong, but to say what the law is, rather than what they personally think the law ought to be.
Chuck Grassley
#18. I dared not trust the case on the presumption that the court knows everything. In fact, I argued it on the presumption that the court didn't know anything.
Abraham Lincoln
#19. There is nothing in the world that could make me turn from the law. With a clear conscience, I am prepared to answer for each and every one of my political and administrative orders and actions, and to do so before the court of public opinion ...
Djemal Pasha
#20. Our court dockets are so crowded today it would be better to refer to it as the overdue process of law.
Bill Vaughan
#21. One can only imagine how effective justice might be if admissible in a court of law.
Robert Breault
#23. For some reason, people repeatedly have asked RBG when she thought there would be enough women on the court. The question is asinine, her answer effective: 'When there are nine.
Irin Carmon
#24. This is a court of law! Not a court of truth!
Leon Kaye
#25. The California supreme court, following the English common-law, decided that the owner of land bordering a watercourse was entitled only to the usufruct of the water; that if he used it he must return it to its original course unimpaired in quality and undiminished in volume.
Jerome Hart
#26. Sitting in a Court of law, I can receive no evidence but what comes under the sanction of an oath.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#27. The rules of war for federal court were contained in the 86 rules of federal civil procedure, the rules of the local federal court, and the courtroom rules of the particular federal judge.
Kenneth Eade
#28. These people have elevated audacity to symphonic and operatic levels. The Florida Supreme Court relied on new law to resolve the election dispute down there.
Vincent Bugliosi
#29. We have never had a president of the United States or a nominee of a major party who was a Supreme Court law clerk.
Jeffrey Toobin
#30. I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.
Dick Gephardt
#31. No higher duty, or more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution-of whatever race, creed or persuasion.
Hugo Black
#32. My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.
Bill Scott
#33. I have often thought how little I should like to have to prove organic evolution in a court of law.
Errol White
#34. Seats on the [Court] bench are not reserved for causes or interests. They're given to those who will uphold the rule of law so long as the nominee is well-qualified to interpret and apply the law.
Sam Brownback
#35. The law is like one of those sci-fi creatures that keeps growing limbs and spawning replicas of itself until they take over the entire world.
Melody A. Kramer
#36. As long as I'm sitting in the chair, there's not going to be any Jew appointed to that court. [No Jew] can be right on the criminal-law issue.
Richard M. Nixon
#37. Love it or hate it, Obamacare is the law of the land. It was passed by Congress, signed into law by President Obama, declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court and ratified by a majority of Americans, who reelected the president for a second term.
Hank Johnson
#38. I am still doing my due diligence. A vote on a Supreme Court nominee is a lifetime appointment and when the court decides, it is the law of the land.
Bob Menendez
#39. All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people out there with court of appeals experience, because court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know. I know.
Sonia Sotomayor
#40. That would work in a court of law. But we're not in a court of law. We're in the court of tequila. And in the court of tequila, you and I both know you were lying.
Melanie Shawn
#41. Princes that would their people should do well
Must at themselves begin, as at the head;
For men, by their example, pattern out
Their limitations, and regard of laws:
A virtuous court a world to virtue draws.
Ben Jonson
#42. We are increasingly blind for terrorism purposes and for general law enforcement purposes with the new devices and the continuing effort to make them even more secure against even court orders authorising law enforcement to have access.
William Bratton
#43. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.
Antonin Scalia
#44. A Supreme Court nomination and appointment is not a roving commission to rewrite our laws.
John Cornyn
#45. It is not surprising that in talking about uncertainty we should lean heavily on facts, just as the court of law does when interrogating witnesses. Facts form a sort of bedrock on which we can build the shifting sands of uncertainty.
Dennis Lindley
#46. I'd represent "Love" when it sued hypocritical writers for abuse.
Natalya Vorobyova
#47. Should I get wind of another such rumor, I shall ruthlessly proceed against the person in question - not in a court of law, that is not my way. But I shall dedicate my next book to him ! : the economic and social consequences will teach him a lesson for the rest of his life !
Arno Schmidt
#48. Review Court Records Use Megan's Law to Check State Databases of Sexual Offenders
Janet Portman
#49. If we do our job right, the Supreme Court won't be made up of men and women who are on the side of the little guy or the big guy; rather, the Supreme Court will be made up of men and women who are on the side of the law and the Constitution.
Chuck Grassley
#50. We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution - not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#51. Then again, it didn't take me long in the world of corporate law to realize that truth is an afterthought in court. In fact, truth is an afterthought in most trials. But there were six million people who were lied to, during World War II, and somebody owes them the truth.
Jodi Picoult
#52. Really, some cases shouldn't even smell the court room. Screw Habaeus Corpus, lock up the criminal and have the keys thrown away.
S.A. David
#53. This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added.
Robert H. Jackson
#54. I think it's pathetic that a court of law cannot be in a vacuum of the legal system, without the influence of the public threatening to do great bodily harm to people and property. It's really a pathetic statement for our country.
Mark Fuhrman
#55. Will a nominee embrace and uphold the essential meaning of the four words inscribed above the entrance of the Supreme Court building: Equal justice under law?
Edward Kennedy
#56. What five members of the Supreme Court say the law is may be something vastly different from what Congress intended the law to be.
Benjamin Franklin Fairless
#57. The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.
Byron White
#58. If I resign any time this year, he [President Obama] could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court ... [A]nybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they're misguided.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
#59. Courts of equity make their decrees so as to arrive at the justice of the case without violating the rules of law.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#60. We are not in the regime of Aurangzeb. We are in the regime of rule of law. When rule of law is concerned, it applies to government, it applies to Supreme Court, it applies to everybody.
Veerappa Moily
#61. It is not the practice, now will I allow subversives to get away by insisting that I've got to prove everything against them in a court of law or [produce] evidence that will stand up to the strict rules of evidence of a court of law.
Lee Kuan Yew
#62. Everybody is presumed to know the law except His Majesty's judges, who have a Court of Appeal set over them to put them right.
William Henry Maule
#63. When did it become the law of the land that the Supreme Court has the final say on anything? They cannot have the final say on anything. The American people have the final say on anything.
Rick Santorum
#64. At issue here is a basic law which enables the Supreme Court to quash laws in extreme cases. Up until now, this right of the Supreme Court was not mentioned anywhere, but was just taken. At the same time, we want to enable the Knesset to overrule decisions of the Supreme Court.
Ayelet Shaked
#65. Perhaps the most striking assault on the foundations of traditional liberties is a little-known case brought to the Supreme Court by the Obama administration, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.
Noam Chomsky
#66. The Court is perhaps one of the last citadels of jealously preserved individualism. For the most part, we function as nine, small independent law firms.
Colin Powell
#67. I wonder much that a court of Law should be in doubt whether a Resolution of Congress can superceed the Law of a Sovereign State.
William Whipple
#68. The sad truth is that truth is almost irrelevant in a court of law.
Joy Fielding
#69. Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity.
Khalil Gibran
#70. Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, presidents have understood that the Supreme Court cannot make a law. They cannot make it. The legislature has to make it, the executive branch has to sign it and enforce it.
Mike Huckabee
#71. In 'Citizens United v. FEC', the Supreme Court ruled that sections of the federal campaign finance law known as McCain-Feingold imposed unconstitutional restrictions on the First Amendment rights of corporations.
Eric Schneiderman
#72. I pictured myself saying in a court of law, "Well, Your Honor, there was
this evil sorcerer's apprentice and a flesh-eating, power-granting demon
he summoned from a primordial dimension ... "
Even I couldn't see a way to make that script work.
Laura Resnick
#73. Being a member of the court is a lot like walking through fresh concrete. Do you remember doing that as a child and leaving a footprint and it hardens after you? I'm afraid that's what we do and we look back and we see those opinions we've written and they've sort of hardened after us.
Sandra Day O'Connor
#74. I would support a Presidential candidate who pledged to take the following steps: ... At the end of the war in the Persian Gulf, press for a comprehensive Middle East settlement and for a 'new world order' based not on Pax Americana but on peace through law with a stronger U.N. and World Court.
George McGovern
#75. Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that's so deep in history that there's no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.
Noam Chomsky
#76. I don't care whether the person is guilty or not guilty. It's not my business to establish guilt or innocence. It's a court of law that does that and a jury does that, but not me.
Werner Herzog
#77. When I walk into court, I'm not concerned about justice, the rule of law, or making sure it's a fair fight. Fuck fair. I'm there to protect my client. That's where my duty begins and ends. But
Marcia Clark
#78. 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
#79. Great actors come with depth about how their character sees the world, and they completely defend it. They could defend it in a court of law, down to the reason the patient deserved this.
M. Night Shyamalan
#80. I will be vigilant to protect the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court, and I will work to ensure that it upholds the rule of law and safeguards those liberties that make this land one of endless possibilities for all Americans.
John Roberts
#81. I'd love to do a court-room drama. I loved 'Ally McBeal.' That was one of the main reasons I went to law school.
Rebel Wilson
#82. But, I know enough people in that court, through the years, to know one thing: There's always somebody who surprises you, who rises above what they thought they appointed him for, and stays with the separation of powers, and with the right of the law to decide.
Arthur Hertzberg
#83. I have come to regard the law courts not as a cathedral but rather as a casino.
Richard Ingrams
#84. Our Supreme Court is not a court of law. It is a court of conjecture and political fad.
A.E. Samaan
#85. Do we want an Attorney General who will play politics with the law, play politics with the court and just play politics with international conventions designed to protect our troops? I do not want to play that kind of politics. I am going to vote against Alberto Gonzales.
Barbara Mikulski
#86. It's very, very difficult I think for us to have a transparent debate about secret programs approved by a secret court issuing secret court orders based on secret interpretations of the law.
Tom Udall
#87. There's a a right to privacy for all individuals and all who have legal rights - and that includes the unborn. As an obstetrician, if I cause any harm to a fetus, I will be sued. If someone kills or harms a fetus they're liable in a court of law.
Ron Paul
#88. Although the governor strongly disagrees with the court substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people, the court has now spoken clearly as to their view of the New Jersey Constitution, and, therefore, same-sex marriage is the law.
Chris Christie
#89. I will look, your Honor, and endeavor to find a precedent, if you require it; though it would seem to be a pity that the Court should lose the honor of being the first to establish so just a rule.
Rufus Choate
#90. In my own experience, I plotted and planned my life when I was getting out of law school to know by what year I'd make it to the Supreme Court. That didn't work out the way I planned.
Lloyd Blankfein
#91. The court is the bureaucracy of the law. If you bureaucratise popular justice then you give it the form of a court.
Michel Foucault
#92. Barack Obama would never accept a court in Mexico decreeing what the law in the United States would be.
Michael Gove
#93. Some lawyers and judges may have forgotten it, but the purpose of the court system is to produce justice, not slavish obedience to the law.
Charley Reese
#94. Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means a defense, as in a court of law. Christian apologetics involves making a case for the truth of the Christian faith.
William Lane Craig
#95. The law serves of nought else in these days but for to do wrong, for nothing is spread almost but false matters by color of the law for reward, dread and favor and so no remedy is had in the Court of Equity in any way.
Jack Cade
#96. This Court repeatedly has recognized that the whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife belongs to the laws of the States and not to the laws of the United States.
Harry A. Blackmun
#97. 'Fairness' can be an important quality for legislators to consider when they are passing public policies. But it is a subjective standard. And it has no place among judges on a court - whose duty is to dispassionately judge a law's constitutionality.
Gary Bauer
#99. Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act's limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges.
Antonin Scalia
#100. Uganda's Constitutional Court will decide whether the military court can proceed with this trial. A nation cannot claim to be operating under the rule of law if its military tribunals ignore the orders of civilian courts.
Bill Vaughan
