Legal Framework Quotes

We have institutions, but they don’t work. We have laws, but they must be enforced.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

As long as the law exists, there will be morality.

A government of laws, not of men.

International Law

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

The Supreme Court is our ultimate check and balance.

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.

Both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev have law degrees but they do not know what the rule of law means.

Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions, customs, and laws.

Where there is no law, there is no freedom.

Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.

The Constitution was not made to fit us like a straitjacket. In its elasticity lies its chief greatness.

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.

Great progress was made when arbitration treaties were concluded in which the contracting powers pledge in advance to submit all conflicts to an arbitration court, treaties which not only specify the composition of the court, but also its procedure.

Indeed, the Roman laws allowed no person to be carried to the wars but he that was in the soldiers' roll.

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

We need a proper balance between rights and responsibilities in our laws.

We're a country of laws and rules, and the Supreme Court has ruled that life forms are patentable entities.

I believe in the Constitution - and I believe in common sense.

The Duke’s Laws

In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.

If civil society has nobody who protects the law, then what kind of society is that?

There used to be technological limitations … that provided a measure of privacy for Americans. Now with essentially no technological limitations—the technology can practically do anything—the only way to strike the appropriate balance between liberty and security is to embed that balance in the law.

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.