Legal Meaning Quotes

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

When you are talking about constitutional law, you are talking about the balance of power in the community and the question of how you find meaning boils down concretely here to who finds the meaning.

Whenever the words of a law will bear two meanings, one of which will give effect to the law, and the other will defeat it, the former must be supposed to have been intended by the Legislature, because they could not intend that meaning, which would defeat their intention, in passing that law; and in a statute, as in a will, the intention of the party is to be sought after

Legally speaking, the term 'public rights' is as vague and indefinite as are the terms 'public health,' 'public good,' 'public welfare,' and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals.

The law rarely hesitates in declaring its own meaning; but the Judges are frequently puzzled to find out the meaning of others.

I do not believe there are any circumstances in which a judge should consider his or her own values or policy preferences in determining what the law means.

If human values were relative, all laws-whether those based on revealed religions or those devised by man-would become meaningless.

Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.

Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.