Legal Power Quotes

No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

A judge who cannot punish, associates himself in the end with the criminal.

Having deprived her [women] of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise. thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he [men] has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns …. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty. and to administer chastisement.

I am the law in Indiana.

Let them bring me prisoners, and I’ll find them law.

A law has to have teeth.

When you know the law, you're above the law. When you break the law, you're under the law.

If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence … and the courts must abide by that decision.

I'm the elected sheriff, and I'm going to keep doing what the Constitution says I can do.

Is there any statute that gives the President authority in any way to change the spelling?

Before we decide to trust you with this power, we ask you to stand before the public and explain your views. Justice may be blind, but it should not be deaf.

… a clear abuse of judicial power

The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves

The exercise of the power of eminent domain is against common right. It subverts the usual attributes of the ownership of property.

No controlling legal authority

It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.

Noah and his family were the only loyal and obedient subjects to the legal power: they alone were saved.

I have strongly rejected the proposal to pardon and transfer her to the United States. I do not have the legal power to pardon terrorists and even if I did, I would not use it.

Readiness to change from old law to new law enfeebles the power of the law.

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.

The law is a powerful thing but the law doesn't always change what's in people's hearts. And so all of us have an obligation to think about how we're treating other people.

If we in Congress cannot in time of war regulate the behavior of our troops, then we have no power.

It should go without saying that regular citizens have no authority to arrest or detain anyone.

Even legal documents are of little value if there is not behind them the force of public opinion and public approval.

Nationwide injunctions not only allow district courts to wield unprecedented power, they also allow district courts to wield it asymmetrically.