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2014 July 18
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"Nullification is but one legitimate result in an appropriate constitutional process safeguarded by judges and the judicial system. When juries refuse to convict on the basis of what they think are unjust laws, they are performing their duty as jurors." |
"[T]o deny a defendant of the possibility of jury nullification would be to defeat the central purpose of the jury system." |
"The right of the jury to decide questions of law was widely recognized in the colonies. In 1771, John Adams stated unequivocally that a juror should ignore a judge’s instruction on the law if it violates fundamental principles: “It is not only ... [the juror’s] right, but his duty, in that case, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.” There is much evidence of the general acceptance of this principle in the period immediately after the Constitution was adopted." |
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2014 July 17
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"Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits;
it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men." |
"To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been:
Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in." |
"Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty." |
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2014 July 16
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"People demand freedom only when they have no power." |
"Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner – the know-nothing fundamentalist right – it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well." |
"Wise men talk because they have something to say;
fools, because they have to say something." |
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2014 July 15
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"The act of voting is one opportunity for us to remember that our whole way of life is predicated on the capacity of ordinary people to judge carefully and well." |
"Collectivism is the political theory that states that the will of the people is omnipotent, an individual must obey; that society as a whole, not the individual, is the unit of moral value. ... Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics." |
"The public must be put in its place,
so that it may exercise its own powers,
but no less and perhaps even more,
so that each of us may live free
of the trampling and the roar
of a bewildered herd." |
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2014 July 14
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"Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?" |
"The First and Fourteenth Amendments say that Congress and the States shall make "no law" which abridges freedom of speech or of the press. In order to sanction a system of censorship I would have to say that "no law" does not mean what it says, that "no law" is qualified to mean "some" laws. I cannot take this step." |
"Freedom includes the right to say
what others may object to and resent...
The essence of citizenship is to be tolerant
of strong and provocative words." |
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