3,047 Quotes About Law

The First Law is that men are free, for without the freedom to choose, men cannot serve their heart, and without heart they cannot serve their Gods, their Saints, or their King.

As is well known, what characterizes both the Fascist and Nazi regimes is that they allowed the existing constitutions (the Albertine Statute and the Weimar Constitution, respectively) to subsist, and according to a paradigm that has been acutely defined as "dual state" - they placed beside the legal constitution a second structure, often not legally formalized, that could exist alongside the other because of the state of exception.

A court case is usually a competition to prove the innocence of the innocent … or the guilty.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis on the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Part of the genius of the rhetoric of law and order is that as a principle (rather than a practice), it can be sold as the ultimate call for equality: We all deserve the law. We all deserve order. All lives matter.

We have built a colony in a nation, not in the classic Marxist sense but in the deep sense we can appreciate as a former colony ourselves: A territory that isn't actually free. A place controlled from outside rather than within. A place where the mechanisms of representation don't work enough to give citizens a sense of ownership over their own government. A place where the law is a tool of control rather than a foundation for prosperity.

Look for alternatives to punishments, not only alternative punishments.

The law is a cudgel when necessary and a balm where appropriate.

Judicial systems that enforce inequality as law are tools of subjugation.