Common Law Quotes

... assertions that Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary ... is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character existed.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, part of the common law.

The law is sawdust that had already been chewed by a thousand mouths.

The common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or that such a character existed.

Hanging may seem barbarous, but the greater barbarity lies in the slow abandonment of our common law traditions.

Courts do not make the law.

One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, today is doctrine.

I had a very long discussion with Justice Gorsuch in my office, and he pointed out to me that he is a co-author of a whole book on precedent. So, someone who devotes that much time to writing a book on precedent, I think, understands how important a principle that is in our judicial system.

It should be remembered by those who shudder at the words of Marat, that at this very period, and for long after, the common law of England caused dozens of human beings to be hanged every week, for trivial offences, such as stealing a loaf of bread; and yet the supporters of these laws are not execrated as monsters, but are merely described as unnecessarily severe in their views of justice.

When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth and the word socialism began to be heard, I thought and still think that fear was translated into doctrines that had no proper place in the Constitution or the common law.

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.

Although Britain has, since 1653, had nothing approaching a single, codified constitution, it did for a very long time possess a broad cult of constitutional writing. The Petition of Right of 1628, like the Bill of Rights of 1689, was a cherished text. So, most of all, was Magna Carta.

There is not, in the whole compass of human affairs, so noble a spectacle as that which is displayed in the progress of jurisprudence; where we may contemplate the cautious and unwearied exertion of a succession of wise men, through a long course of ages, withdrawing every case, as it arises, from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible rules.

Unfortunately in this Century crime has ceased to be largely local in origin and effect. Crime is now established on an international scale and the criminal law must face this new reality. Their lordships can find nothing in precedent, comity or good sense that should inhibit the common law from regarding as justiciable in England inchoate crimes committed abroad which are intended to result in the commission of criminal offences in England.

I have to confess I do have a slight preference. I do think, naturally, that people from India and Australia are in some ways more likely to speak English, understand common law, and have a connection with this country than some people that come perhaps from countries that haven't fully recovered from being behind the Iron Curtain.

One goal of law - as we learn in law school from the first day of contracts - is to deter bad behavior.

Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason....

The law is always in transition.

No one familiar with the common law of England can read the Constitution of the United States without observing the great desire of the Convention which framed that instrument to make it conform as far as possible with that law.

You can't just slander someone, defame them, lie about them. You can't incite people to crime. There's all sorts of reasonable restrictions on free speech that are already codified in the British common-law system.

The law of England is a law of liberty .

Since the thirteenth century at least,--that is, since the Magna Carta,--England has been the bulwark of modern law.

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.

The Magna Carta was the first class-based charter, enforced on the monarchy by the rising class.

Nothing could be more dangerous than following the popular maxim whereby it is the spirit of the law that must be consulted. This is an embankment that, once broken, gives way to a torrent of opinions.