None of my peers avoided prison. None of ‚em.

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.

‚Getting smart on crime‘ does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

On one of my last days at school, the headmaster said I would either end up in prison or become a millionaire. That was quite a startling prediction, but in some respects, he was right on both counts!

More law, less justice.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.

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.

It’s cool to be recognised by your peers.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don’t have executions.

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

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 my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

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

Law is always better than war.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

With the advent of DNA, we know that people have been convicted and sentenced to death who later proved not to be guilty of the crime.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

Algorithms diminish public safety in this country. They ask us to pretend that lengthy arrest records and violent crimes don’t matter. They ask police to scoop up the bad guys only for the courts to immediately release them. They turn us into a bad joke.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

Just because you’ve seen ‚My Cousin Vinny‘ doesn’t qualify you to be a federal judge.

The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole, and now sits in a prison cell.

TV’s a big deal in prison. A big deal. People watch it nonstop.

Let’s be clear about this, and let’s be clear: we should not be creating incentives to house people in prison. We should be creating incentives instead to shut the revolving door into prison.

How does a nice Catholic girl end up going to prison for a year? It’s crazy. I’ve made mistakes. I have to pay for those mistakes.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

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.

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

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

Due process should matter.

Don’t hire a prison consultant.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.

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.

Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

When you’re in prison, you want to know that you were thought about.

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

I strongly believe that for serious and violent criminals, we must absolutely hold them accountable for their crimes and send them to prison.

Law, without force, is impotent.

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

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

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

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

I never sympathise with the accused unless there’s a chance the accused is not guilty, but I certainly don’t ever sympathise with the criminal.

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

I don’t like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

I think most defense attorneys know, to some extent, their clients are guilty.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

I really don’t pay attention to the outside world when I’m incarcerated, because being in prison is like being in a different world. So I don’t pay attention to what’s going on outside of jail, because it’s all beyond my control.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.