Chris Grayling Quotes

For centuries, the courts took the view that preserving the discretion of the authorities trumped the rights of victims to hold them to account. It was because of the Human Rights Act that this began to change.

All repressive laws must be revoked, and laws introduced to protect the rights of the people.

It is idle to waste time and discuss whether it was within our power and duty to see whether we could prepare a Bill better than the Remedial Bill.

I'd personally like to see the Human Rights Act go because I think we have had some problems with it.

The Habeas Corpus Act is the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny.

Strip away the factual misinformation repeatedly peddled about the Human Rights Act and almost everyone acknowledges that it works well in practice. Police up and down the country have found the Human Rights Act a much clearer and firmer basis for practical policing than the common law ever was.

To draft a bill of rights that simply replicates the European convention on human rights gives the game away; namely that the Human Rights Act does, in fact, offer appropriate protection to all of our citizens according to universally accepted standards.

[Guarantees of freedom] will be found to consist in the highest protection of the individual and of society, chiefly against public power, because it is necessarily from this power that the greatest danger threatens the citizen, or that the most serious infringement of untrammeled action is to be feared.

The progress of civilization, in all Christian countries at least, has created a public opinion, which now protects the personal liberty of men in a greater degree than formerly, regardless of the form of government

In a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of ‘liberty’ must be broad indeed.

Before I became Attorney General, I won’t say that I stayed up at night worrying about civil rights

There should be constitutional liberty of speech and freedom of thought, which is the elementary right of every citizen under any civilized form of Government

… take the Constitution out of cold storage!

We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans

unconstitutional, unnecessary, extrajudicial

The power of citizenship as a shield against oppression was widely known from the example of Paul's Roman citizenship, which sent the centurion scurrying to his higher-ups with the message: "Take heed what thou doest; for this man is a Roman.

It is easy to protect the rights to responsible citizens; only a democracy will protect the rights of those who are deemed irresponsible.

Experience has shown that no civil right has ever been secured without legislation.

One can conclude that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist in any just society. It does not follow that each of those essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system.

As we approached our work, my colleagues and I looked to the U.S. Constitution for guidance. It states, 'No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.' No person, no exceptions.

The First Amendment rights, everybody has them.

Our rights to live and to love each other, those rights are greater than any other right in the Constitution, period.

The right to religious freedom and the right to vote are both fundamental to our democracy.

In the United States, we can do almost anything we want. It's not like Egypt, where you're going to get murdered by the security forces.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.