Samuel Freeman Miller Quotes

The Roman Code was merely an enunciation in words of the existing customs of the Roman people.

The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another.

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

Religious doctrines do not and clearly cannot be adopted as the criminal code of a state.

The Roman jurisprudence has the longest known history of any set of human institutions.

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.

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.

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

Almost all law in the United States is State law.

There are very few countries in the world where we have a jury system as we all know.

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

There is not, in the whole compass of human affairs, so noble a spectacle as that which is displayed in the progress of jurisprudence; where we may contemplate the cautious and unwearied exertion of a succession of wise men, through a long course of ages, withdrawing every case, as it arises, from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible rules.

It makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law. It makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law.

… law as it exists in the modern community may be conveniently, although perhaps not comprehensively, defined as the sum total of all those rules of conduct for which there is state sanction.

The common law has now become an exceedingly voluminous system; and as its expositions rest, not on a positive text, but upon arguments, analogies, and commentaries, every person who desires to know much must engage in a very extensive system of reading. He may employ half his life in mastering treatises the substance of which, in a positive code, might occupy but a few hundred pages. The codes of Justinian, for instance, superseded the camel-loads of commentaries which were antecedently in use, and are all now buried in oblivion. The Napoleon Codes have rendered thousands of volumes only works of occasional consultation which were before required to be studied very diligently, and sometimes in repeated perusals.

We have a very long legal system with the European Union, and we're English speaking.

There is no jewel in the world comparable to learning; no learning so excellent both for Prince and subject, as knowledge of laws; and no knowledge of any laws so necessary for all estates and for all causes, concerning goods, lands or life, as the common laws of England.

The penal code deals with things like theft, false testimony, adultery, fornication, etc. and then there's the law of the state, the law of the individual and the law of the public.

I wanted to be an attorney all the way up until I was 17.

Criminalizing behavior, if it's part of the heritage of this state, is in my opinion a bad idea.

Our role as judges is to interpret the law.

I grew up in a family where law was in the air we were breathing.

Judges should decide legal disputes. Judges should not make law.

I like the law. I like the part that's about reasoning, about persuasion, about telling stories, about trying to build structures that fall within rules.

I just think it gets confusing for our communities when the federal law is different from the state law.