John McLean Quotes

The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done - the right should make the law.

We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.

A changeless constitution becomes the protector not only of vested rights but of vested wrongs.

What is morally correct and what is legally correct are not always the same thing.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

The law is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the due process clause, the courts will be very busy indeed.

You must legislate morality.

A first principle of Anglo-American jurisprudence is that the ends do not justify the means.

It's very much simpler to get rid of any written rule you choose than it is an item of customary morality... while laws are preserved on tablets of wood or stone, customary morality is engraved deep in our living souls

Don’t bother interpreting the statute for us: we know it better than you do, for we made it.

Law is not law, if it violates the principles of eternal justice.

I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal.

Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.

You can't legislate morality.

The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known.

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

The law is immoral.

If Moses had gone to Harvard Law School and spent three years working on the Hill, he would have written the Ten Commandments with three exceptions and a saving clause.

The law of God, and also the way to life, is written in our hearts: It lieth in no man's supposition and knowing, nor in any historical opinion, but in a good will and well-doing.

The end of all political struggle is to establish morality as the basis for all legislation.

There is no major political issue in the country that does not end up as a legal issue.

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

Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms. They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Since the state is a community of human beings it is as truly subject to the moral law as any private society.