Fortunatus Dwarris Quotes

The lawyers want to govern us by the common law of England. Trust me for it, common sense is a much safer guide for us.

They had to make their own laws in accordance with the necessities of time, and circumstances, the state of affairs, and the experience of judges.

The common law of England has been laboriously built around a mythical figure—the figure of the reasonable man.

The glorious uncertainty of the law was a thing well known and complained of, by all ignorant people, but all learned gentleman considered it as its greatest excellency.

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

Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason....

Any rule, not existing in the nature of things, or that is not permanent, universal and inflexible in its application, is no law, according to any correct definition of the term law.

Our lady the Common Law is a very wise old lady though she still has something to learn in telling what she knows.

It is the merit of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principles afterward.

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.

… 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.

There is nothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence.

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 …

Their problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents to the new conditions of American life.

Lady Justice doesn't have empathy for anyone. She rules strictly based upon the law, and that's really the only way that our system can function properly under the Constitution.

I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.

The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

Law never is, but is always about to be.

My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.

One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, today is doctrine.

Though in many other countries everything is left in the breast of the Judge to determine, yet with us he is only to declare and pronounce, not to make or new-model the law.

Law is largely crystallized custom.

Judges ought to remember that their office is Ius dicere and not Ius dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.

It is very important to know the law, but it is more important to know the judge