Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Magna Carta decreed that no man would be imprisoned contrary to the law of the land …. Important as the principle was, the Barons of Rynnymede described no specific legal process to enforce it… Gradually the writ of habeas became the means by which the promise of Magna Carta was fulfilled.

The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches.

It's one of the nice things about this nation that when the Constitution is violated, if it affects you, you can bring a suit.

More rogues than honest men find shelter under habeas corpus.

Our country is wounded and bleeding now if we don't know whether or not habeas corpus exists.

The national emergency no longer justifies abrogation of individual rights of Habeas Corpus and trial by jury on definite charges.

If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era; and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.

No man’s life shall be taken away, no man’s honor or good name shall be stained, no man’s person shall be arrested, restrained, banished, dismembered or in any way punished … unless it be by virtue of equity of some express law of the Country.

Human rights must be protected by the rule of law, and there can never be occasions where human rights can be neglected or ignored or the rule of law set aside.

In our country, [habeas corpus ] means that if you've been sentenced and convicted in a state court, either to death or to some other kind of sentence, you have the right to petition a federal court to review what happened to you. And until [Bill] Clinton, you had three, four, five, even more years I collect records of people who have been on death row for eight, 10, 12, 14 years - this is before Clinton - who finally got a decent lawyer, usually a pro bono lawyer, and an investigator, and were able to find out - they - they're but approved that they're - that they were innocent.

The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.

My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state.

In violation of the Habeas Corpus Act and the fundamental laws of our constitution these men have never been brought to trail or even allowed to see a lawyer.

We have to worry about protecting the Constitution.

The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.

Magna Carta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.

Are all the laws to go unexecuted and the government itself go to pieces, lest civil liberties be violated?

The purpose of a written constitution is to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.

Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.

The Habeas Corpus Act is the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny.

No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, (killed) outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.

It is as much the duty of government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of citizens, as it is to administer the same between private individuals.

Every citizen has, under the law, a sacred and inviolable right to personal liberty and to the possession of his goods

There is a problem. We do have this little thing called the Constitution.

… due process of law is not for the sole benefit of an accused. It is the best insurance for the Government itself against those blunders which leave lasting stains on a system of justice but which are bound to occur on ex parte consideration