Henry James Sumner Maine Quotes

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

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

The rules and principles of case law have never been treated as final truths but as working hypotheses, continually retested in those great laboratories of the law, the courts of justice. Every new case is an experiment, and if the accepted rule which seems applicable yields a result which is felt to be unjust, the rule is reconsidered.

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

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

Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

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

It cannot be assumed that equity was following common law whenever they agreed, any more than the converse.

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.

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.

There is not, in the whole compass of human affairs, so noble a spectacle as that which is displayed in the progress of jurisprudence; where we may contemplate the cautious and unwearied exertion of a succession of wise men, through a long course of ages, withdrawing every case, as it arises, from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible rules.

Stare decisis is the policy of the court to stand by precedent;  the term is but an abbreviation of “stare decisis et non quieta movere”--to stand by and adhere to decisions and not disturb what is settled.

It makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law. It makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law.

Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.

In a number of cases dissenting opinions have in time become the law.

The Roman Code was merely an enunciation in words of the existing customs of the Roman people.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

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 epoch of Customary Law, and of its custody by a privileged order, is a very remarkable one.

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

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

How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law.

Law is a formless mass of isolated decisions.

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.