Ken Liu Quotes

Law builds upon and, I should like to claim, is one of the liberal arts. It uses words of persuasion and changing definitions for practical ends.

What I really like about law is that it's not an endless discourse like history or philosophy. In law, there comes a point where problems have to be solved, and cases decided.

Law is not a science, but is essentially empirical.

The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history.

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

Legal doctrines ... derive meaning and content from the circumstances that gave rise to them and from the purposes they were designed to serve. To these they are bound as is a live tree to its roots

There is nothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence.

The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.

My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.

Bad facts make bad law.

Good lawyering is usually cerebral and impersonally. You can convince a judge with a mastery of facts, detail, and precedent - not a story from the gut about how you feel a certain way.

I guess law was always interesting to me because you deal with constants. I like to deal with constants, abstracts, constants and reason and ration, rational approaches to things. I don't know, I never really thought why I wanted to study law. But if you ask me whether I would do it again, absolutely.

The rules and principles of case law have never been treated as final truths but as working hypotheses, continually retested in those great laboratories of the law, the courts of justice. Every new case is an experiment, and if the accepted rule which seems applicable yields a result which is felt to be unjust, the rule is reconsidered.

Supreme Court arguments and decisions are fascinating to a few of us and really pretty boring to most.

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.

Law professors like Obama tend to view the law as one means to an end, and others, like myself, tend to view it as the end itself.

The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me.

My dream job would be a lawyer. I can talk my way out of anything, and I love cross-examining people. I think I'd be a really good lawyer.

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

Our lady the Common Law is a very wise old lady though she still has something to learn in telling what she knows.

The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a Code.

Law is a bottomless pit.

How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law.

Law is a formless mass of isolated decisions.

Law is largely crystallized custom.