Legal Norms Quotes

Culture is a product of law. And laws create norms for society. This is why anyone who wants to change the culture of a country must try to change the norms of the country.

The violation of some laws is a normal part of the behavior of every citizen.

And the law, that is the perfection of reason, cannot suffer anything that is inconvenient.

It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

There are those who argue that the concept of human rights is not applicable to all cultures. We in the National League for Democracy believe that human rights are of universal relevance. But even those who do not believe in human rights must certainly agree that the rule of law is most important. Without the rule of law there can be no peace.

Legal behavior is not incompatible with rational, self-interested behavior.

The will to set values and the power to make them law are jointly at the bottom of all operative norms. When linked to divine wisdom, this source of moral law is still in safe hands which man can trust.

Written laws are formulas in which we endeavor to express as concisely as possible that which, under such or such determined circumstances, natural justice demands.

With the death of bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was okay to toss out our civil liberties if the 'bad guys' were scary enough.

Law is largely crystallized custom.

Laws are made by the old, exceptions by the young.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

Things that used to be illicit are not illicit today. Licit products of yesterday, may be illicit today.

Corruption is not, therefore, a matter of a few ‘rotten apples’ or of a venal ‘class’, even less an ‘evil’ to be eradicated by means of vigorous ‘ethical’ campaigns. On the contrary, it is a habitual part of everyday life, and expected element of every social transaction. This ought not to surprise us. As we have already emphasized, there is in Africa a marked reluctance to abide by the abstract and universalist norms of the legal-bureaucratic order that are the foundation of Western politics.

Governments can derive their authority from three sources: tradition, the qualities and charisma of an individual leader, and constitutional and legal norms.

Law is no explanation of anything; law is simply a generalization, a category of facts. Law is neither a cause, nor a reason, nor a power, nor a coercive force. It is nothing but a general formula, a statistical table.

Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?

Since Franklin Roosevelt's leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the U.S. has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them while seeking, by hook or by crook, to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application.

Norms appearing in the form of law entitle actors to exercise their rights or liberties. However, one cannot determine which of these laws are legitimate simply by looking at the form of individual rights. Only by bringing in the discourse principle can one show that each person is owed a right to the greatest possible measure of equal liberties that are mutually compatible.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

Then again maybe there's something that I've been doing in the privacy of my own bedroom my whole life that I think is perfectly normal but is actually illegal in thirty-two states.

The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?