Cesare Beccaria Quotes

The judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice and given satisfaction to the community

I take it that the judgment is an essential point in every conviction, let the punishment be fixed or not.

You're certain to get a decision in a trial.

History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.

The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

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

When a person is found less guilty than he is suspected, he is concluded more innocent than he really is.

For every criminal case, the judge must construct a perfect syllogism: the major premise must be the general law; the minor premise, whether or not the action in question is in compliance with the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment.

Now, I - for several years while I was researching this book, I felt quite obsessed by thoughts about sentencing, punishment, how judges arrive at their decisions.

When the code of laws is once fixed, it should be observed in the literal sense, and nothing more is left to the judge than to determine whether an action is or is not conformable to the written law.

So I don't blame Boies for the decision of the Court at all.

To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.

Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.

Reaching a conclusion has to start with what the parties are arguing, but examining in all situations carefully the facts as they prove them or not prove them, the record as they create it, and then making a decision that is limited to what the law says on the facts before the judge.

It is essential to the pure and peaceful administration of justice that all its officers keep carefully within the boundaries of their constitutional powers. Auxiliary to this, but not secondary in importance, is a due knowledge of the leading subjects for their inquiry and decision.

It is the merit of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principles afterward.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases.

Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction ... if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong

Measured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication. Doctrinal limbs, too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable.

Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority.

Juries are not qualified to judge questions of law, but they are very capable of judging questions of fact.

there shall be in every court, three justices or commissioners, who shall sit with the twelve men of the neighborhood, with them to hear all causes, and to assist the said twelve men of the neighborhood in case of law; and that they the said justices shall pronounce such judgment as they shall receive from, and be directed by the said twelve men in whom only the judgment resides, and not otherwise.

Every judge is hereby admonished that if a demand is made upon him by any one, he shall give the reasons, in their proper order, for the decision he has made

When the Supreme Court renders an important decision, the reasons it gives are often more important than the choice it has made.

He should be. Were I on the bench, I would give him one quickly.