David Lammy Quotes

One thing I know from personal experience, judges hate it when parties talk publicly about their cases. There are a lot of things about our criminal legal system that need to be changed, and this is just one of them. Prosecutors know how to play the press. Most defendants don't.

There are some states where there are literally no lawyers on the state judiciary committee.

The justice system is confused in trying to understand it, but frankly, if it paid attention to the really blatant cases and did a good job with that, we would be light years ahead of where we are now.

Thousands of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury's believing their word over a police officer's are slim to none.

In the past, there were groups which felt that the High Court didn't represent them.

The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal will take care of themselves. Look after the courts of the poor, who stand most in need of justice. The security of the republic will be found in the treatment of the poor and the ignorant. In indifference to their misery and helplessness lies disaster.

If you're dealing with criminals, they're not going to want to go to court.

Plea bargaining is a system that is best described as one of condemnation without adjudication. It is a system that replaces trial, which is what our constitution intended, with deals… those deals are coerced. The prosecutor is basically forcing people to waive their rights to jury trial by threatening them with ever greater sanctions if they refuse to plead and instead demand the right to jury trial.

Does America really need 70 percent of the world's lawyers? … Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million lawsuits coursing through our system annually?

There is too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot.

All lawyers are the natural enemies of the police.

Justice in this country is an insurance policy. It’s not something that we’re supposed to get sometimes.

And let no one apply to the king in any suit, unless he at home may not be worthy of law, or cannot obtain law.

The laws you have already passed for the establishment of a judiciary system have opened the doors of justice to all descriptions of persons. You will consider in your wisdom whether improvements in that system may yet be made, and particularly whether a uniform process of execution on sentences issuing from the Federal courts be not desirable through all the States.

It confers a great reputation, and great distinction to be accompanied by those whom you have defended and saved in the law courts.

I learned that in seventy percent of all the civil cases in the judiciary of the United State at least one of the parties is not represented by an attorney. I didn’t know that.

For the common man the justice meted out in the lower courts is much more important than that meted out in the Supreme Court.

In the right to vote … Justice should never be too expensive. Justice should never be too slow. Justice should never depend on an army of lawyers sweeping in to help, and that is the situation we have now. We are dependent on the ability to find help whenever we can.

To deny political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment.

Legal aid gets a bad press. Some rail against handing taxpayers' money to criminals; others attack fat cat lawyers, while some argue that we spend far more on legal aid than other countries. But let's get some facts straight: saying that legal aid is just about criminals is wrong - most goes to people before any decision is taken on their guilt.

I hope people think about the way trials go today, with the justice system overwhelmed by cases.

I don't know what it's like to get to face down my attacker in court, but I do know that they lie.

Police and prosecutors and the courts have got to talk together.

The beauty of our court system is that anybody can enter the court and sue. Uh, you have to be appointed to be in the Executive Branch. You have to be elected to be in the Legislative Branch, but anybody can go into court.

A bedrock principle of our justice system is ensuring a fair day in court, something that is especially important for children who cannot advocate for themselves.