James Kent Quotes
When foreigners are admitted into a state upon free and liberal terms, the public faith becomes pledged for their protection. The courts of justice ought to be freely open to them as a resort for the redress of their grievances. But strangers are equally bound with natives to obedience to the laws of the country during the time they sojourn in it, and they are equally amenable for infractions of the law
The highest court in New York.
James Kent, 1763-1847, Chief Justice of the New York State Court of Appeals Chancellor of New York State, Lectures in Law, Of The Rights And Duties Of Nations In A State Of Peace
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See {622908} for another Jefferson expression of this principle. This is today a Libertarian position but is not generally followed by the States of the Federal Government. Personal use of marijuana, suicide and birth control are all outlawed, controlled and regulated by government.
For a similar application of the law to all see the Massachusetts Body of Liberties over a century earlier.
Prosecutors, even ones who are frequent lawbreakers themselves violating defendant's rights or illegally manipulating trials, are reluctant to be officially found to have done so. Many politicians start their political careers as prosecutors and then rise to higher office. If it is officially found that they had abused a defendant and violated the law, it can be detrimental to their careers. So in many states, they have placed barriers making it much harder for an improperly convicted person to even get a court hearing. The cost to society however is that they are never accountable, and people have been wrongly imprisoned and cannot even get a hearing to prove that they were the victims of official misconduct. The rationale for these rules that prevent victims from obtaining fairness and justice is finality—the concept that there should be some end to the process of appeals so justice can be said to have been done. It prevents a kind of closure for many of the victims of crimes and their families if the guilty perpetrator is constantly appealing or can do so.
The public must be assured that prosecutorial decisions are made on legal and not political grounds.
In 2007 Inglesias was fired by the same George W. Bush Administration because they were unhappy that he was not prosecuting cases for which he claimed that there was no legal justification for but had potential political advantage for the administration.
This quotation was a slight paraphrase from Article 14 of the Republican Party Platform which had been adopted unanimously at the Chicago Party Convention on May 17, 1860. This was the convention where Lincoln was nominated. It is not known who originally drafted Article 14, although Lincoln's agents were very active in the platform drafting process. In his later campaign speech, Lincoln ran on the Party Platform.
“Familia” in Latin meant in this context, the community or the citizens as opposed to the officials, The Bishop determined the former was under attack by the officials who in the probating of wills and estates would take bribes or levy taxes under “laws” that they would make up on the spot bilking the rightful inheritors of the property and wealth of the deceased. The principle that laws and regulations must be written down in advance and not otherwise, is a fundamental part of Western law today, But as this quotation shows, it was not always such.
At the time many of the powerful and influential upper class felt that some of the laws did not necessarily apply to them or their corporations. They bribed legislators to change laws when they were inconvenient to ignore. Roosevelt was the first President to take them on.
James Kent was an American jurist and legal scholar. He was the author of Commentaries on American Law.
