JAMES MANSFIELD

Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. Fiat justitia et ruant coeli.

Give your decisions, never your reasons; your decisions may be right, your reasons are sure to be wrong.

If we do not speak with our own opinion, we prevaricate with God and our conscience.

God forbid that the defendant should not be allowed the benefit of every advantage he is entitled to by law.

No degree of antiquity can give sanction to a usage bad in itself.

The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself, from whence it was created, is erased from the memory; it is of a nature that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law.

The essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law.

The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it.

Every man who comes to England is entitled to the protection of the English law, whatever oppression he may heretofore have suffered, and whatever may be the colour of his skin, whether it is black or whether it is white.

The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it.

Give your decisions, never your reasons; your decisions may be right, your reasons are sure to be wrong.

Every man who comes to England is entitled to the protection of the English law, whatever oppression he may heretofore have suffered, and whatever may be the colour of his skin, whether it is black or whether it is white.

Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. Fiat justitia et ruant coeli.

If we do not speak with our own opinion, we prevaricate with God and our conscience.

The essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law.

The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself, from whence it was created, is erased from the memory; it is of a nature that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law.

God forbid that the defendant should not be allowed the benefit of every advantage he is entitled to by law.

No degree of antiquity can give sanction to a usage bad in itself.