Legal Certainty Quotes

The U.K.'s reputation as a business destination will suffer if its authorities cannot be relied on to enforce the law.

When a President asserts constitutional powers he needs to be pretty certain he has those powers.

When the code of laws is once fixed, it should be observed in the literal sense, and nothing more is left to the judge than to determine whether an action is or is not conformable to the written law.

Political reasons have not the requisite certainty to afford rules of judicial interpretation.

For every crime that comes before him, a judge is required to complete a perfect syllogism in which the major premise must be the general law; the minor, the action that conforms or does not conform to the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment. If the judge were constrained, or if he desired to frame even a single additional syllogism, the door would thereby be opened to uncertainty.

Delays in granting of justice very often reduce the speed with which investment could be undertaken, discouraging investors.

We have enacted many economic reforms but also others that have an impact on the overall investment climate. For instance, I launched a very important constitutional reform on judicial certainty that completely restarted the whole of the courts system in Ukraine.

… the magistrate should know what law he is to administer, that the subject should know under what law he is to live.

The acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice.

A written constitution guides and directs the application of law in a way utterly unlike oral guidance. It reminds us that the certainty and consistency of legal application is essential.

The greatest threat we've had to economic growth has been that those in industry don't know what is expected of them. Rules come that are outside of statutes. Rules get changed midway. It creates vast uncertainty and paralysis, and re-establishing a vigorous commitment to rule of law is going to help a lot.

This is why it's bad to run a country by executive order: because our nation runs on laws - when everyone knows the law, and everyone knows what it is, you know both the law and the consequence, and you get that.

I wanted the Irish Constitution to be as explicit as it possibly could be, with as few fictions as possible.

Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.

If you’re going to have the death penalty, you had better be sure that you have the right man.

It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.

Good legislation should bring clarity and not confusion.

Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.

I might not like a statute... but if you know what to expect, you can plan. The law is static. It's stable. It gives you confidence. You know you have to act a certain way.

It is best that laws should be so constructed as to leave as little as possible to the decision of those who judge.

The route of expropriation, and especially in energy matters, is not what most promotes investment or generates greater confidence.

For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.

If laws are going to work in this country, there has to be some finality.

Many progressives understand Scalia, and other conservative judges, in crassly political terms - as opponents of affirmative action, abortion, gun control, and campaign finance legislation. But what Scalia cared most about was clear, predictable rules, laid down in advance.

Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?