Common Law Quotes - Page 2

• The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of 'The Reasonable Man'.

  A. P. Herbert

  Funny, Humor, Men

  'Uncommon Law' (1935) 'The Reasonable Man'

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• Let there be then no coercion established in society, and the common law of gravity prevailing, the sexes will fall into their proper places.

  Judith Sargent Murray

  Sex, Fall, Law

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• As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Home, Self, Expression

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• It was natural that the direct wielders of the royal prerogative, men who sat in the Star Chamber and the Privy Council, who knew the secrets of the State and the necessity for prompt action, should despise the merely declaratory character of a good deal of Common Law process. To them we doubtless owe those four great pillars of Chancery jurisdiction, the injunction, the decree, the sequestration, and the commission of rebellion.

  Edward Jenks

  Stars, Character, Men

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

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• The invention of writs was really the making of the English Common Law; and the credit of this momentous achievement, which took place chiefly between 1150 and 1250, must be shared between the officials of the royal Chancery, who framed new forms, and the royal judges, who either allowed them or quashed them.

  Edward Jenks

  Law, Judging, Achievement

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

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• Certainty is the mother of repose, and therefore the common law aims at certainty.

  Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke

  Mother, Law, Common

  "The Dictionary of Legal Quotations". Book by James William Norton-Kyshe, 1904.

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• It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.

  John Ruskin

  Motivational, Running, Business

  "The Yale Book of Quotations". Book by Fred R. Shapiro, p. 657, 2006.

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• The common law of chattels, that is to say, the law ultimately adopted by the King's courts for the regulation of disputes about the ownership and possession of goods, was, to be a substantial extent, a by-product of that new procedure which had been mainly introduced to perfect the feudal scheme of land law.

  Edward Jenks

  Kings, Law, Land

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

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• ... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Character, Law, Names

  Thomas Jefferson (1855). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretary of state”, p.359

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• I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law... There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations.

  Joseph Story

  Beautiful, Lying, Believe

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• It is a common law of nature, which no time will ever change, that superiors shall rule their inferiors.

  Dionysius of Halicarnassus

  Law, Common, Inferiors

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• By the English common law, her husband was her lord and master. He had the custody of her person, and of her minor children. He could 'punish her with astick no bigger than his thumb,' and she could not complain against him.

  Harriet Hanson Robinson

  Children, Husband, Women

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• There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back...

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Country, Men, Law

  "The Past Through Tomorrow" by Robert A. Heinlein, G. P. Putnam Inc., (p. 25), 1967.

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• If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.

  Jefferson Davis

  Men, Law, Doe

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• Not only the financial power, but also the legal power, has remained seated in Britain. The Washington Post commented on June 18, 1983 that after the American Revolution, all the old laws remained in effect in the new United States: Some of these laws of "English common law" dated back to 1278, long before America was discovered.

  Eustace Mullins

  June, Law, America

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• Dubai was brilliant, they looked around the world. They saw Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Sydney, London all ran British common law. British common law is much better for commerce than is French common law or sharia law. So they took 110 acres of Dubai soil, put British common law with a British judge in charge, and they went from an empty piece of soil to the 16th most powerful financial center in [the] world in eight years.

  Michael Strong

  New York, Powerful, Years

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• I expect from our judges that their verdicts are also inspired by Talmudic law - and not only by common law or European justice systems.

  Ayelet Shaked

  Law, Justice, Judging

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I think the American justice system has a lot more issues than the European justice system, especially the Scottish justice system. We have a really nice mix of European codified law and the traditional English system of common law, which is what the American system is based on.

  Gerard Butler

  Nice, Thinking, Law

  Source: ca.askmen.com

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• If any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship concerning their common peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny or rise up against their commanders and officers; if any should preach or write that there should be no commanders or officers because all are equal in Christ, therefore no master or officers, no laws nor orders, nor corrections nor punishments - I say I never denied that in such cases, the commander may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors according to their deserts and merits.

  Roger Williams

  Writing, Order, Law

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

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• Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children, even of aliens, born in a country, while the parents reside there under the protection of the government, and owing a temporary allegiance thereto, are subjects by birth.

  St. George Tucker

  Country, Children, Government

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• Consider: what could be more American than the principle that every person is to be held accountable for his or her crimes only? Could anything be more un-American than the Second Commandment's warning that "I Yahweh, thy God, am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."? Not even the Common Law would have hung a man because his grandfather had stolen a horse!

  Frank Zindler

  Horse, Children, Father

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• Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one -- except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.

  Henry Adams

  Law, Bishops, Unbroken

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.222, Booklassic

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• The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists-we follow the Talmud. It is our common Law.

  Herman Wouk

  Heart, Blood, Law

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• But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions.

  Charles Evans Hughes

  Responsibility, Law, Punishment

  "Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697". Judicial opinion, 1931.

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• Jurors have found, again and again, and at critical moments, according to what is their sense of the rational and just. If their sense of justice has gone one way, and the case another, they have found "against the evidence," ... the English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people: The jury box is where the people come into the court: The judge watches them and the people watch back. A jury is the place where the bargain is struck. The jury attends in judgment, not only upon the accused, but also upon the justice and the humanity of the Law.

  E. P. Thompson

  Law, People, Justice

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