46 Court Quotes

For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit, has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to total disagreement as to all the premises.

You sit up there, and you see the whole gamut of human nature. Even if the case being argued involves only a little fellow and $50, it involves justice. That's what is important.

But ignorance of the law is no excuse. A person is guilty even if he breaks the law unknowingly. I shall be perhaps the first of the defendants to get up on that stand and admit that I am at least partly guilty.

The Supreme Court of the United States... has validated the Nazi method of execution in... concentration camps, starving them to death!

'Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.'

Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you what's walking Salem - vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! This warrant's vengeance! I'll not give my wife to vengeance!

What does the court want with you? It receives you when you come and it dismisses you when you go.

A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir; what is the purpose of courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence - what shall be the result of legal argument.

I went to court for a parking ticket. I pleaded insanity. I said, 'Your honor, why would anyone in their right mind park in the passing lane?'

Judges ought to remember, that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.

While the opinion of the court, by Chief-Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it.

'We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it. If we're lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us - sue us right now.'

Out upon the wharfs they came, Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame, And around the prow they read her name, The Lady of Shalott. Who is this? And what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they crossed themselves for fear, All the Knights at Camelot; But Lancelot mused a little space He said, 'She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott.'

We've been waiting 30 years to end the lunacy of nine demigods on the Supreme Court deciding every burning social issue of the day for us, loyal subjects in a judicial theocracy...We've gone from a representative democracy to a monarchy, and the most appalling thing is - even conservatives just hope like the dickens the next king is a good one.

Elizabeth: I do not judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, John - only somewhat bewildered. Proctor: Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer!

Hale: There is a prodigious fear of this court in the country - Danforth: Then there is a prodigious guilt in the country. Are you afraid to be questioned here? Hale: I may only fear the Lord, sir, but there is fear in the country nevertheless. Danforth: Reproach me not with the fear in the country; there is fear in the country because there is a moving plot to topple Christ in the country! Hale: But it does not follow that everyone accused is part of it. Danforth: No uncorrupted man may fear this court, Mr. Hale!

I cannot think of a single answer that I made in the years that I argued before the Court while Justice White sat on it that seemed to satisfy him. While I won a number of cases that I argued before him, and he voted for my side in most of them, I never had the sense that anything I said pleased him. White, a former All-American running back (whose much-repeated college nickname, Whizzer, was one that appalled him), was no fan of press claims for broad First Amendment protection. He invariably asked questions that were both pointed and powerful.

One could happily make a case that more random civilians, and fewer fucking lawyers, should be on the court. But the only other thing to say about Miers is that she is a fucking lawyer.

Eventually, these people will have trials and they will have counsel and they will be represented in a court of law.

President Bush would leave the Supreme Court looking less like America and more like an old boys club.

Every juror swears that he will give a true verdict according to his evidence. The sacred obligation of this oath demands, that to unanimity truth shall not be made a sacrifice.

When citizens testify before grand juries they are required to tell the truth. Without the truth, our criminal justice system cannot serve our nation or its citizens.

It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v. Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier 'separate-but-equal' decision.

I do not ask the clemency of the court. I came into it to get justice, having failed in this, I demand the full rigors of the law.

Ach! I know. If I were to play the Pathetique or the Moonlight Sonata for the high judges, they would let me off. But my defense unfortunately will not be musical.

The Prosecution holds me responsible for the concentration camps, for the destruction of Jewish life, for Einsatzgruppen and other things. All of this is neither in accord with the evidence nor with the truth. The accusers as well as the accused are exposed to the dangers of a summary proceeding. It is correct that I had to take over the Reich Security Main Office. There was no guilt in that in itself. Such offices exist in governments of other nations too. However, the task and activity assigned to me in 1943 consisted almost exclusively in the reorganization of the German political and military intelligence service, though not as Heydrich's successor. Almost a year after his death I had to accept this post under orders and as an officer at a time when suspicion fell on Admiral Canaris of having collaborated with the enemy for years. In a short time I ascertained the treason of Canaris and his accomplices to the most frightful extent.

Told the judge it was self-defense, he won't listen/So I'm bumpin this in federal prison, givin everything I owe

Drei Dinge sind bei Hofe unentbehrlich: Gesunde Beine, ein geschmeidiger Rucken und eine glatte Zunge.

No court can make time stand still.

Gorau Cymro tro trylew Biau'r wlad, lin Bywer Lew, Gwr meingryf, gorau mangre, A phiau'r llys; hoff yw'r lle.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is...If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each...This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.

The trial can only end in a mistake because it is founded on one. How can a foreign court try a sovereign government of another country? Could we have tried your President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Secretary Henry Morgenthau, or Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, if we had won the war? We could not have done so and would not have. And trying that went on would have to be done by the nation itself and the courts set up there.

I hate race discrimination most intensely and in all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a black man in a white man's court. This should not be.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Force has no place in the world of love. It is impossible to control likes and dislikes by law. No one ever did and no one ever can love on compulsion. Courts can not obtain jurisdiction of the heart.

Jan Mickelson: One of my litmus test questions to find out what kind of thinking process a candidate has done on this, is to ask my test question. Test question is: do you think that Roe v. Wade is the law of land? Ron Paul: Well, they call it the law of the land, but I want to clarify that by getting rid of it. I think this is one example of the courts overstepping their bounds tremendously. Texas had a law against this violent act, and it went in to the federal courts and the Supreme Court. They overruled the state law, which should have been legitimate, and then came down on the side of legalizing killing a fetus, even into the 3rd trimester. But the fastest way to accomplish this is not through a constitutional amendment, or waiting till you get enough justices to overrule. You can pass a law in the Congress, which denies jurisdiction to the federal courts. So if Iowa or Texas or any state passes a law against abortion, you can't get it into the federal courts, and the states would decide this issue, as they decide all issues of violence: murder, manslaughter, theft, all this things are supposed to be state issues.