Thomas Hobbes Quotes

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.

Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.

There has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the power and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their power, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and find all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.

It is then a very unseasonable time to plead law, when swords are in the hands of the vulgare, or to think to restrain them with fear of punishments when they look after liberty and shake off all government.

The ruling authority is liable to raise a claim which could justify a deviation from the law by saying: The law is supposed to serve the country. The law is merely one consideration, there are additional considerations which are no less important; the good of the country is one such consideration and it could possibly override the law….this is a very dangerous claim. The saying that patriotism is the last refuge of the charlatan is well known. This argument, taken alone, is liable to topple the principle of the legality of government and the rule of law together with it.

It seems to me that stare decisis ought to be applied even to the doctrine of stare decisis, and I confess never to have heard of this new, keep-what-you-want-and-throw-away-the-rest version.

For all laws are general judgments, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgment is a law to him whose case is judged.

A fixed rule may give rise to occasional deviations from justice; but these amount to nothing more than the price which every member of the community may be called upon to pay for the advantage of an enlightened code. No laws can be framed sufficiently comprehensive to embrace the infinite varieties of human action …

It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there is no offense.

The Supreme Court, when it decides a new legal question, does not make illegal what was previously legal; it gives a final authoritative determination of whether an action was legal when it took place.

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.

Law enforcement does not ask an advantage in its struggle with the lawless. It asks only that the scales of justice be balanced. The cause of justice is not served when hardened criminals are allowed to go free through legal technicalities.

A dissent in a court of last resort is an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day when a later decision may possibly correct the error …

All kings of England had ever, in cases of necessity or expediency, been accustomed, at intervals, to elude them [the laws.]

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.

We cannot say that we love the rule of law and reject arguments that appeal to the rule of law as technicalities and hair splitting.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When somebody up there—a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator—so decrees.

Judges shall judge justly, according to the written law and not according to their own judgment.

And let no one apply to the king in any suit, unless he at home may not be worthy of law, or cannot obtain law.

If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.

In the United States almost every political question becomes a legal question—or at least a question with legal dimensions.

Now we are going to have to be a government of men rather than a government of law.

Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness….government in its best state is a necessary evil; in its worse state an intolerable one.

All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape