Legal Terminology Quotes

Journalists casually use terms like crossing the border illegally when referring to asylum seekers - when in fact there is no law that says they must use the ports of entry.

I don't know that I could do a procedural legal drama and spend all my time in a courtroom talking legal jargon that I don't necessarily understand.

You can't trademark the word 'sci-fi.'

Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.

Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding.

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.

In America, an acquittal doesn't mean you're innocent, it means you beat the rap. My clients lose even when they win.

Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'

"Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir," replied the little gentleman. "Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more."

What constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment has not been exactly decided. It has been said that ordinarily the terms imply something inhuman and barbarous.

The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.

When you can spell subpoena without thinking about it, that's when you know you've made it.

The Naturalization Act of 1790, three years after the Constitution, said the children of citizens shall be considered natural born citizens. That's in 1790. Five years later, in 1795, they amended the Naturalization Act of 1795 and said the children of citizens, wherever born, are citizens is excluded the phrase "natural- born citizens" when they amended the act!

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

Jury instructions are so numerous and complex, it's a wonder jurors ever wade through them. And so it should come as no surprise that they can sometimes get stuck along the way. The instruction on circumstantial evidence is confusing even to lawyers. And reasonable doubt? That's the hardest, most elusive one of all.

It cannot be said that the Constitution formed 'the people of the United States,' for all time, into a corporation. It does not speak of 'the people' as a corporation, but as individuals. A corporation does not describe itself as 'we,' nor as 'people,' nor as 'ourselves.' Nor does a corporation, in legal language, have any 'posterity.'

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 minute you read something and you can't understand it, you can be sure it was written by a lawyer. Then, if you give it to another lawyer to read and he don't know just what it means, then you can be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer. If it's in a few words and is plain, and understandable only one way, it was written by a non-lawyer.

An indictment is not a conviction.

A lot of people probably don't realize how difficult it is to stick to that lawyer speak when you're not a lawyer. I see everyone on 'The Good Wife' - everyone, people who have been there since day one - struggling with that language because it is just not how people talk.

But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.

The term person means an individual other than an Indian.

TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder." The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.

Contrary to common belief, the presumption of innocence applies only inside a courtroom. It has no applicability elsewhere, although the media do not seem to be aware of this.

To play a lawyer and have one year of law school under your belt, you sort of know what you're talking about! I'm able to memorize the legal courtroom stuff a lot faster than I would have been able to otherwise.