Edward Coke Quotes

Not that pleading can be taken as a test, for the forms of action, notably Debt, ignore the fundamental difference between duties imposed by law and duties created by the will of the parties.

I'm trying to demystify the whole process. Make it simple, make it palatable. I want people to have respect for the law, and I want to educate people on the basics of the law.

Every man must be taken to be cognizant of the law, otherwise there is no saying to what extent the excuse of ignorance may not be Law carried. It would be urged in almost every case.

The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.

A license to practice law is not a license to violate it.

While some of them acknowledge the obligation of natural morality in their mode of conducting their cases, and preserve their individual character as gentlemen, there are others who acknowledge no law, human or divine, but the law of Scotland.

I do try very hard to develop themes that are easily understood and that, hopefully, will paint vivid images of the legal principles and implications of the ruling that will stick in the Justices' heads and will help influence how they think about the case.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

I've signed thousands of documents, but never read them.

If you haven't signed anything, you cant be ripped off.

I still don't like authority exercised without reason. But they laugh at you at Cambridge if you say that sort of thing. For them, the law is a system of rules not that different from mathematics.

You can't learn everything you need to know legally.

It may be stated as a general principal, that public policy forbids the maintenance of any suit in a court of justice, the trial of which would inevitably lead to the disclosure of matters which the law itself regards as confidential.

The legal and ethical issues are just beginning.

Law is a special realm, different from the related ethical realm, as it does not qualify the inner conditions of the human heart.

Circumstances may require a dissolution of contracts founded on the most binding and sacred obligations…which dissolution ought not to be dependent on private will, but should require legislative interference; inasmuch as the republic is deeply interested in the private business of its citizens.

The law has outgrown its primitive stage of formalism when the precise word was the sovereign talisman, and every slip was fatal. It takes a broader view to-day. A promise may be lacking, and yet the whole writing may be "instinct with an obligation," imperfectly expressed. If that is so, there is a contract.

Ethical and legal are not synonyms. ;

In reality there are two, and only two, foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility.

Law is the safest helmet; under the shield of the law no one is deceived.

There is no presumption in this country that every person knows the law: it would be contrary to common sense and reason if it were so.

We cannot forget the need to use the law as a shield, but we must remember other forces of the law.

A repeated problem with the Obama administration has been the lack of understanding that contracts only matter if they are enforceable - and if there is a party willing to do the enforcement.

Bills of attainder, ex-post facto laws and laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.