Alexander Hamilton Quotes

The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.

I well understand that the role of Attorney General is to enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it.

There is an international law just as there has always been a law against theft, but because the thief gets away with his booty at times is no reason why we should say that the law against theft has been abrogated.

When those who uphold the law are strong, the state is strong. When they are weak, the state is weak

People expect that the law will be what the Supreme Court told them what the law was going to be.

We don't pay judges to think; we pay judges to rule on the law.

It's not so much the attorney general's job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our jobs and enforce laws effectively as we're able.

Our role as judges is to interpret the law.

Respect for the law must be the basis for all legal action.

We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror.

The law is like rope...useful, necessary, strong, but it can be bent and twisted into all kinds of shapes depending on the occasion.

Democracy is not possible without effectively working legal system.

There can be no peace without law.

Human rights must be protected by the rule of law, and there can never be occasions where human rights can be neglected or ignored or the rule of law set aside.

I think whether you are a judge on my court or whether you are a judge on a court of appeals or any court, and lawyers too - and if you're interested in law yourself, you'll be in the same situation - you have a text that isn't clear. If the text is clear, you follow the text. If the text isn't clear, you have to work out what it means. And that requires context.

The overall similarity is probably in the mentality of law enforcement officers. There's a sense of wanting to really uphold a sense of morality and make sure that the laws are enforced to the letter, whenever possible.

The laws are the sole guardians of right, and when the magistrate dares not act, every person is insecure.

We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force.

Obama's attitude toward the rule of law is apparent in the words he used to describe what he is looking for in a nominee to replace Justice David Souter. He wants 'someone who understands justice is not just about some abstract legal theory,' he said, but someone who has 'empathy.' In other words, judges should decide cases so that the right people win, not according to the rule of law.

It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can't be enforced weakens all other laws.

What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

I have 100 percent confidence in the German judicial system.

The law is hard but it is the law.

The court is the bureaucracy of the law. If you bureaucratise popular justice then you give it the form of a court.

Laws are not made like lime-twigs or nets, to catch everything that toucheth them; but rather like sea-marks, to guide from shipwreck the ignorant passenger.