Lawrence Lessig Quotes

Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires; and likewise a weighing of relative social values.

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.

Unfortunately, what many people forget is that judges are just lawyers in robes.

Besides a happy policy as to civil government, it is necessary to institute a system of law and jurisprudence founded in justice, equity, and public right.

The criterion of constitutionality is not whether we believe the law to be for the public good.

The Founding Fathers didn’t intend for the lawyers to run this country

The government of the United States is, and always has been, a lawyer's government.

Law is not a science, but is essentially empirical.

Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority.

The law has to be, in part, a teacher.

If I wasn't a musician, I'd take up the law. They are the rottenest, wealthiest people in America.

We are a country based on the rule of law.

Courts in America seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right.

The law is a horrible business.

The Supreme Court is the last refuge in America for our rights and liberties.

With respect to the death penalty, I believe that a majority of the Supreme Court will one day accept that when the state punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the victim and transgresses the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That day will be a great day for our country, for it will be a great day for our Constitution.

Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you...take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.

Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste; they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society.

The laws I love; the lawyers I suspect.

Our mandate is to be a nation of laws. And the Supreme Court is the place where we look to safeguard our civil rights and our individual liberties.

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.

We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.

Lawyers are like spiders, they've eat up all the flies, and I guess they'll have to eat each other soon.

They attack the victim, and then the criminal who attacked the victim accuses the victim of attacking him. This is American justice. This is American democracy and those of you who are familiar with it know that in America democracy is hypocrisy. Now, if I’m wrong, put me in jail; but if you can’t prove that democracy is not hypocrisy, then don’t put your hands on me.