Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Decency, security, and liberty alike
demand that government officials shall be
subjected to the same rules of conduct
that are commands to the citizen...
If the government becomes a lawbreaker,
it breeds contempt for law;
it invites every man to become a law unto himself;
it invites anarchy."

~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis  

"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."

~ Justice William O. Douglas  

"I should, indeed, prefer twenty men to escape death through mercy,
than one innocent to be condemned unjustly."

~ Sir John Fortescue  

"Lawyers [are] operators of the toll bridge
across which anyone in search of justice has to pass."

~ Jane Bryant Quinn  

"A guilty man is punished as an example for the mob;
an innocent man convicted is the business of every honest citizen."

~ Jean de la Bruyere  

"Judges ... rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times."

~ Justice Warren E. Burger  

"What, then, is the law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. ... since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individual groups. ... But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense."

~ Frederic Bastiat  

"When courts fail to engage in oversight or even distort the Constitution to rationalize the ultra vires actions of government, and when academics and political activists aid and abet them in this activity by devising ingenious rationalizations for ignoring the Constitution’s words, they are playing a most dangerous game. For they are putting at risk the legitimacy of the lawmaking process and risking the permanent disaffection of significant segments of the people."

~ Brannon P. Denning  

"I say that you cannot administer
a wicked law impartially.
You can only destroy.
You can only punish.
I warn you that a wicked law,
like cholera, destroys everyone
it touches -- its upholders
as well as its defiers."

~ Jerome Lawrence  

"The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, and both should be checks upon that."

~ John Adams  

"The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge."

~ U.S. vs. Dougherty  

[N]o American should retreat an inch on the right of jurors to acquit
if they perceive the law or its administration to be unjust.

~ Charley Reese  

"One of the greatest problems that we as a free people face today is that for the past 100 years trial judges in the U.S. have routinely misinformed jurors that they were bound to accept the judge's opinion of what the law is; which law to apply; and whether or not they had to find a defendant guilty. In so doing these judges have welded shut this all important safety valve, which our Founders so wisely provided our society -- and the result has been an explosive one."

~ Mike Robbins