I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012.

Let us remember we are all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law, basic respect for public order, and the right of peaceful protest.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

It was an act of patriotism when we worked to pass a law allowing the prosecution of federal hate crimes in the name of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

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

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

Even Gaddafi’s adversaries assure us that he stood out for his intelligence as a student; he was expelled from high-school for his anti-monarchic activities. He managed to enroll in another high-school and later graduated in law at the University of Benghazi at the age of 21.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there is no offense.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‚We, the people.‘

Arizona presents no specific reason for excepting capital defendants from the constitutional protections extended to defendants generally, and none is readily apparent.

On the whole, we think of our consumers – other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it’s better to have it clearer than confusing.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

The 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.

The notion that it is improper to look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification.

I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

We shouldn’t have to be burdened with all the technicalities that come up from time to time with shrewd, smart lawyers interpreting what the laws or what the Constitution may or may not say.

The bells will ring and the marriages will begin. And it’s a great day in our state for equal protection under the law for all people.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

I am well aware that there are prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, including some who have said they have chosen to resist the law because of religious reasons.

My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.

It’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

You don’t send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like ‚shooting an unarmed child,‘ when that ‚child‘ was beating him bloody.

I understood that with the swipe of my pen as a prosecutor, I would have the decision in my pen to make a decision about someone’s life.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

Law is mind without reason.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.