Arbitrary Justice Quotes

The day must come when the rule of law replaces emergency decrees an when the independent judiciary replace arbitrary justice.

An application of judicial power that does not rest on facts is worse than mindless, it is inherently dangerous. If its deployment does not rest on facts - cold, hard, solid facts, established either by admissions or by trials - it serves no lawful or moral purpose and is simply an engine of oppression.

Whenever a Christian has a dispute with a heathen, no matter what the subject in question may be, the quarrel is promptly taken up by the priest, who if he cannot himself intimidate the local officials and compel them to give right to the Christian, represents the case as one of persecution when … it is appealed. Then is redress rigorously extorted, without the least reference to the justice of the demand.

If we lived in a world where we had the rule of a judge, rather than the rule of law, you would have seen an absolute sea change, an avulsive change in the law as it was interpreted, applied and rendered by our court.

These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.

The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.

For centuries we have been living in the society where not laws but people ruled, where there was no legal state.

The death penalty is as random as being struck by lightning.

In this distinct and separate existence of the judicial power in a peculiar body of men, nominated indeed, but not removable at pleasure, by the crown, consists one main preservative of the public liberty; which cannot subsist long in any state unless the administration of justice be in some degree separated from the legislative and also from the executive power. Where it is joined with the legislative, the life, liberty, and property of the subject would be in the hands of arbitrary judges, whose decisions would be regulated only by their own opinions, and not by any fundamental principles of law; which, though legislators may depart from, yet judges are bound to observe. Were it joined with the executive, this union might soon be an overbalance for the legislative. For which reason, by the statute 16 Car. I, c.10, which abolished the Court of Star Chamber, effectual care is taken to remove all judicial power out of the hands of the King's privy council, who, as then was evident from recent instances, might soon be inclined to pronounce that for law which was most agreeable to the prince or his officers. Nothing, therefore, is more to be avoided, in a free constitution, than uniting the provinces of a judge and a minister of state.

A midnight knock on the door followed by execution is no way a leader should be treated.

We do not sit like a kadi under a tree dispensing justice according to considerations of individual expediency

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

To punish the same act by the two governments [state and federal] would violate, not only the common principles of humanity, but would be repugnant to the nature of both governments.

A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser seductions of interest or resentment.

Of what use are all the codes in the world, if by means of confidential reports, if for trifling reasons, if through anonymous traitors any honest citizen may be exiled or banished without a hearing, without a trial?

If the jurisdiction of the Inquisition is not fully allowed, vengeance is denounced against such as call it in question for if any of its officers are opposed, those who oppose them are almost certain to be sufferers for the temerity; the maxim of the Inquisition being to strike terror, and awe those who are the objects of its power into obedience. High birth, distinguished rank, great dignity, or eminent employments, are no protection from its severities; and the lowest officers of the Inquisition can make the highest characters tremble.

With the present state of the Egyptian judiciary, they [the government] can convict anybody of anything.