Legal Context Quotes

As anyone familiar with my scholarship knows, I am not a huge fan of inherent powers in most contexts.

Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness.

Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person's actions and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

Give a wise man an honest brief to plead and his eloquence is no remarkable achievement.

I'm not a lawyer, and maybe I should have used more specific legal language.

If a Statute make use of a Word the meaning of which is well-known at the Common Law, such word shall be taken in the same Sense it was understood at the common Law.

The jury is supposed to be twelve peers, but technically that would mean every single person on the jury should have Asperger's syndrome, because then they'd really understand me.

One of the challenges for lawyers can be explaining, first of all, what the legal issue is and, second, its significance. And both of those are important.

At the conclusion of my argument I received very high compliments from the Chief Justice and later from other of the Judges. What they said I do not care to repeat.

I think the court will determine that the Faith-Based Initiative that the White House has instituted in the last five years is constitutional, in the context of allowing for broad-based programs to include religious providers.

No lawyer can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.

I wish you to inform the Court that my absence, though deliberate, is not intended in any way to be disrespectful. Nor is it prompted by any fear of the punishment which might be inflicted on me.

I think whether you are a judge on my court or whether you are a judge on a court of appeals or any court, and lawyers too - and if you're interested in law yourself, you'll be in the same situation - you have a text that isn't clear. If the text is clear, you follow the text. If the text isn't clear, you have to work out what it means. And that requires context.

Testimony should be a philosophical problem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen.

No judge writes on a wholly clean slate.

Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies it.

I believe that justices must recognize that our Constitution is an 18th-century document that needs to be applied in the context of the 21st century.

I expect that after the election and the results that the international community will understand which was the framework of this process and under which law we have done this process.

Legal doctrines ... derive meaning and content from the circumstances that gave rise to them and from the purposes they were designed to serve. To these they are bound as is a live tree to its roots

You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.

I started in the law; and the study of law, when it precedes the study of economics, gives you a set of foundation principles about how human beings interact. Economics is very useful, and I studied economics in graduate school. But without understanding the social and organizational context of economics, it becomes a theory without any groundwork.

The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.

Only its [the Constitution's] great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced by the nature of the objects themselves.

Have you ever seen a witness? That's what she called herself. Not a ghost, those don't exist, and not an angel, those do, but a witness." "No." "Ever heard the term?" "Outside of a legal trial, no.

Forensic techniques are enormously useful in a wide range of fields outside the criminal justice system.