Alan Paton Quotes

It seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.

Anyone who takes it upon himself ... to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

In reality there are two, and only two, foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility.

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 …

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Justice is incidental to law and order

Nothing is so faulty as those laws which correct faults. He who obeys them because they are just obeys a justice which is imaginary and not the essence of law; it is quite self-contained, it is law and nothing more.

Good laws are produced by bad actions.

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.

The absolute justice of the State, enlightened by the perfect reason of the State. That is law.

A good law is one that holds, whether you recognize it or not; a bad law is one that cannot, however much you ordain it.

If a law doesn’t produce a just result, then what good is it? …. If you don’t have a just result, then the law doesn’t matter.

The law is only our best approximation of justice, and the law needs constant revision.

There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.

If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.

There are times when the law jeopardizes those who obey it.

I am openly pro-prosecution and make no bones about it. I don't think there are enough people out there sticking up for victims.

But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? Whats stronger- the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?

When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.

[T]hough individual oppression may now and then proceed fro the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter . . .

Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.

We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey.

Our criminal justice system has swallowed up too many people I love.

The success of any legal system is measured by its fidelity to the universal ideal of justice.