Legal Foundations 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.

The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.

In reality there are two, and only two, foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility.

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society.

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society. I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true - that savagery begets only savagery.

The attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle against the general legal foundations of a state, and , as the latter would end in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious nihilism.

The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system ... than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. ... The education of youth ... lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success.

And these things are pretty much foundational: thou shall not kill, steal, bear false witness. All these things are embedded into the laws we enjoy in our nation.

Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws.

The Magna Carta is widely known to be one of the foundational documents for our Constitution. I can only imagine that a mention of that in a court decision would be forbidden by our friends on the right.

The unchanging character of law is the only basis on which continuous action can rest. Without it man would be but as the traveler over endless morasses; the builder on quicksands; the mariner without compass or rudder, driven successively whithersoever changing winds may blow

Where will you find any code of laws among civilized men in which the commands and prohibitions are not founded on Christian principles? I need not specify the prohibition of murder, robbery, theft, trespass.

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the Ten Commandments are a historical document that contains moral, ethical, and legal truisms that any person of any religion or even an atheist can recognize and appreciate.