Thomas Hobbes Quotes

It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.

An act of Congress is binding upon all as much as if it were included … in the Constitution itself.

I entirely differ with the Government as to the value of precedents. In this case, as in others, precedents are not mere dusty phrases, which do not substantially affect the question before us. A precedent embalms a principle.

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.

Every law enacted by the General Assembly shall embrace but one subject.

Don’t bother interpreting the statute for us: we know it better than you do, for we made it.

No law made after a fact done, can make it a crime.

You cannot make a perfect law, but you can make a perfectible law.

A good law is one that holds, whether you recognize it or not; a bad law is one that cannot, however much you ordain it.

Parliament is a potent engine, and its enactments must always do something, but they very seldom do what the originators of these enactments meant.

I'm the policy-maker; I'm the lawmaker.

The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.

I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.

Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.

The world is not going to be saved by legislation.

We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.

All I can say is that with business and the interest of any party before me, I will consider and apply the law as it is written by Congress and informed by precedent.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

The submission of free people to the executive authority of government, is no more than a compliance with laws which they themselves have enacted.

There is no major political issue in the country that does not end up as a legal issue.

If a Statute make use of a Word the meaning of which is well-known at the Common Law, such word shall be taken in the same Sense it was understood at the common Law.

The few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons.

The main product of government is laws.

[In drafting legislation:] There is no magic bullet to prevent judicial mistakes.