Public Rights Quotes

When the public's right to know is threatened, and when the rights of free speech and free press are at risk, all of the other liberties we hold dear are endangered.

Before my tenure, people didn't seem to think that citizens had a right to limit the size of their government.

If public officers will infringe men's rights, they ought to pay greater damages than other men, to deter and hinder other officers from the like offences.

The public has been much abused, the time of legislative bodies uselessly consumed and the rights of citizens ruthlessly invaded under the now familiar pretext of legislative investigation.

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.

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.'

If democracy is destroyed in Britain, it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.

If it's a situation in which the public is being given access, you can't discriminate against the media and say, as a general matter, that the media don't have access, because their access rights, of course, correspond with those of the public.

I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many.

With fear of stating the obvious: Freedom belongs to 'We the People,' not 'They the Politicians.'

It is the purpose of the government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.

Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it.

Through electing officials that will protect the Constitution and commit themselves to the rights of the people and the health of the nation, we will be able to ensure that no group of ideologues and no private sector institution can coopt our rights, take us into senseless wars and steal the nation from its people.

[In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other-that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.

While we all respect the solemn responsibility of our law enforcement officers to protect the public, we must also safeguard the rights of Missourians to peaceably assemble and the rights of the press to report on matters of public concern.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

… a social right

It is usual for the jurors to decide the fact, and to refer the law arising on it to the decision of the judges. But this division of the subject lies with their discretion only. And if the question relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.

When the public's right to know is threatened, all other public rights are threatened.

Freedom of speech, freedom to criticize pillars of government, freedom to form parties and freedom of the press within the framework of the constitution are among the absolute rights of the public.

Everyone has the right to walk from one end of the city to the other in secure and beautiful spaces. Everybody has the right to go by public transport. Everybody has the right to an unhampered view down their street, not full of railings, signs and rubbish.

Freedom must be enjoyed and men must not lose their nature, and be driven by their keepers like the beasts of the field, but neither must they be so enamored of self-rule as to admit of no paramount directors and governors. The public rights and privileges for which they should contend are not the power of self-rule, nor even the immediate and palpable direction of the measures of their government, the great aim and boast of purely republican forma; but the privileges of peaceful criticism on their government, the power of subsequent censure, the acknowledgment in the rulers of a delegated, rather than an original authority, and a reference of their measures to the interest of the community. These are the points for which they should contend, the points which, as a government is more or less perfect, are more or less accomplished and secured.

We are living in an era of transformation where we will all have to reckon with a number of revolutionary changes and challenges for the public sector. In the move towards globalization, the public is becoming more and more knowledgeable about their rights and requirements. As such, the need to revisit our traditional ways of offering public services is inescapable, if we want to ensure the establishment of a more caring public service.

The people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, because the only honest, depositaries of the public rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government.

It is only while the public mind is held in suspense—It is only while there is doubt as to what will be the result of deliberations—it is only while we linger in this hall that any manifestations of uneasiness will show themselves. Whenever war is declared, the people will put forth their rights.