Michael Kirby Quotes

It is essential to institute a legal framework that would ensure justice and improve the quality of life in Burma immediately, because the greatest suffering among the people at the moment is caused by lack of justice and lack of the rule of law.

The cycle of impunity must be broken …. Authorities must be held responsible …. Without accountability, democracy cannot be consolidated. We will remove the veil of impunity that covers the truth.

China has not established the rule of law and thus there is no justice.

Human rights and rule of law are inseparably connected.

The West has institutions that can punish the misconduct of individuals. What drove Rwanda and Africa into decline was the fact that certain people weren't held accountable. When we move to make corrupt mayors or officers answer to the courts, people always immediately say that we are repressive. But should we allow these people to continue to get away with it?

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

It is a different world and they [the Supreme Court] should speak for justice, not prejudice.... I seek justice, not in some distant tomorrow, not in some study commission, but now while I Iive.

To confront criminals, we need to finish with corruption. If we don't do this, there is no hope.

The spine of the FBI is the rule of law. The spine of the FBI is a commitment to doing the right thing, in the right way, while protecting civil liberties.

Shall any man be above Justice. Above all shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice. When great crimes were committed I am for punishing the principal as well as the Coadjutors

Criminals are not the victims of society; society is the victim of criminals.

With a good [political] system, even evil men cannot do evil.

Free integral elections should be guaranteed, where values of justice and rule of law also prevail.

At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

I don't want to harm my government. I want to help my government. But the fact that they are willing to completely ignore due process, they're willing to declare guilt without ever seeing a trial, these are things that we need to work against as a society and say, 'Hey, this is not appropriate.'

Believing in and practising the principles of the rule of law is, with our liberty and democracy, among the most powerful weapons we have. It is less effective if we blur its clarity and we should do this as sparingly as possible.

Democracy is better than tyranny.

Every state and the federal government have laws that protect people from acts of violence, and those laws should be enforced. What I want to see in America is that if you hurt a human being and you bring pain in their life, that's all we need to know. If you did it illegally, you should be prosecuted.

Justice is merely incidental to law and order. Law and order is what covers the whole picture. Justice is part of it, but it can't be separated as a single thing.

Justice needs to be served, what I think people of Baltimore want more than anything else is the truth. That's what people around the country expect.

The deadly weapon against totalitarian society is openness - doing everything very openly on the Internet, letting people know every detail, any little development. Once it is out there, everybody can make their own judgement. [Therefore] holding a trial outside the court. I think that is fairness, that is justice, that is a civil society. Otherwise call it an evil society because everything is hidden.

In any nation in which people's rights have been subordinated to the rights of the few, in any totalitarian nation, the first institution to be dismantled is the jury. I was, I am, afraid.

In many ways, we've been taught to think that the real question is, do people deserve to die for the crimes they've committed? And that's a very sensible question. But there's another way of thinking about where we are in our identity. The other way of thinking about it is not, do people deserve to die for the crimes they commit, but do we deserve to kill?

I don't think any country can survive as a prosperous and dignified country unless there is rule of law.

I think justice is important because there are many injustices in the world and I hate injustice.