John Arbuthnot Quotes

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

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.

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.

After 25-plus years as a lawyer, prosecutor, and defense attorney, I have developed a deep appreciation for both the wisdom of the law and the role that jurists play in framing the rights and responsibilities that define our society.

Law is largely crystallized custom.

The law sometimes sleeps; it never dies.

The law is very special to me.

As I understand, the role of the federal judiciary, the role of our court system, is to provide justice.

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.

Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.

Laws are subordinate to custom.

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.

The glorious uncertainty of the law was a thing well known and complained of, by all ignorant people, but all learned gentleman considered it as its greatest excellency.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

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

As an instrument for practical action, law is responsive to the wisdom of its time, which may be wrong, but it carries forward, sometimes in opposition to this wisdom or passion, a memory of received values.

I'm not interested in culture; I'm interested in the law.

Law is a bottomless pit, it is a cormorant, a Harpy that devours everything.

The job of a justice is justice.

Constitutions are interpreted differently from statutes.

Law is not a science, but is essentially empirical.

They had to make their own laws in accordance with the necessities of time, and circumstances, the state of affairs, and the experience of judges.

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

Nothing is so faulty as those laws which correct faults. He who obeys them because they are just obeys a justice which is imaginary and not the essence of law; it is quite self-contained, it is law and nothing more.