Edward Coke Quotes

Property exists by grace of the law. It is not a fact, but a legal fiction.

The common law of England has been laboriously built around a mythical figure—the figure of the reasonable man.

The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word.

The law doesn't create a right.

Constitutionally you can't have a law go retroactively.

All law has its essence in causation.

Any rule, not existing in the nature of things, or that is not permanent, universal and inflexible in its application, is no law, according to any correct definition of the term law.

When we deal with questions relating to principles of law and their applications, we do not suddenly rise into a stratosphere of icy certainty.

Original intent is a necessary fiction that jurists have invented to get a handle on the Constitution.

It seems to me that stare decisis ought to be applied even to the doctrine of stare decisis, and I confess never to have heard of this new, keep-what-you-want-and-throw-away-the-rest version.

There is nothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence.

I like the law. I like the part that's about reasoning, about persuasion, about telling stories, about trying to build structures that fall within rules.

What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

Like other high subjects, the Law gives no ground to common sense.

Common law is common right.

Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.

I told him that I thought it was law logic - an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.

Principle I: Legal rights are presumptive rights.

Law is the ultimate science.

It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes."

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

Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.