Legal Flexibility Quotes

No society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law.

The law has outgrown its primitive stage of formalism when the precise word was the sovereign talisman, and every slip was fatal. It takes a broader view to-day. A promise may be lacking, and yet the whole writing may be "instinct with an obligation," imperfectly expressed. If that is so, there is a contract.

The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

Judicial judgment must take deep account...of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

What's the Constitution between friends?

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

You don't want to institutionalize the excesses required to meet extraordinary threats. The law just can't anticipate all the contingencies.

When absolutes are abandoned for principles, the U.S. Constitution becomes a blank slate for anyone’s graffiti.

We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

I learned a couple things. The government can do to you whatever they want. They can break the laws, federal laws, as they see fit... You can't turn laws on and off as you deem fit.

Saying the Constitution is a living document is the same as saying we don't have a Constitution.

They who make laws may without doubt amend or repeal them.

[…] over the past decade, we’ve argued in court in favor of administrative latitude in decision-making. Now, by asserting the primacy of states rights, we’re flipping that argument on its head. How do we go back to all these cases where we’ve been arguing for executive discretion and say, “Oops, we didn’t mean it”?

They had to make their own laws in accordance with the necessities of time, and circumstances, the state of affairs, and the experience of judges.

After all, that is what laws are for, to be made and unmade.

No man has ever been hanged for breaking the spirit of the law.

Any law can be changed, obviously, at any time.

In general, we as police officers - at least the good police officers - like to look at each situation case by case and always pay close attention to the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.

When laws, customs, or institutions cease to be beneficial to man, they cease to be obligatory.

The Law is not the same at morning and at night.

Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.

No organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. .. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions.

Like psychoanalysis, constitutional jurisprudence has become a game without rules. By defying the plain meaning of words, ignoring context and history, and using a little ingenuity, you can make the Constitution mean anything you like.

In court a man must sail after every wind.

[Progressives] think the Constitution is like Felix the Cat's magic bag: Look in there long enough and hard enough, and you can find anything.