Legal Precision Quotes

I'm not a lawyer, and maybe I should have used more specific legal language.

The tradition of English-speaking freedom has depended in no small part upon the merely procedural requirement that the state point with exactness to just that conduct which violates the law. It is difficult and often impossible to meet the charge that one's general ethos is treasonable.

There is scarcely anything more important in the government of men than the exact - I will ever say pedantic - observance of the regular forms by which the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined.

Laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any general principle embracing all particulars.

Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.

Lawyers tend to be bright people. They tend to be-much more than many journalists I've encountered-sticklers for detail and accuracy, and they have a logical way of arguing.

Vagueness and good law are simply incompatible.

In my own opinions as a judge, I have never yet had occasion to find a statute ambiguous.

For hundreds of years the use of the word 'man' has troubled critical scholars, careful translators, and lawyers. Difficulties occur whenever and wherever it is important for truth-seeking purposes to know what is being talked about and the context gives no intimation whether 'man' means just a human being irrespective of sex or means a masculine being and none other.

A conviction is in the nature of a verdict and judgment, and therefore it must be precise and certain.

The law is more easily understood by few than many words. For all words are subject to ambiguity, and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the law is multiplication of ambiguity. Besides, it seems to imply (by too much diligence) that whosoever can evade the words is without the compass of the law.