19th-century Judge Quotes

Charles Evans Hughes

Louis Brandeis

Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett

Albert Pike

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Francis Biddle

Joseph Franklin Rutherford

You came here loving Columbia Law School, I want you to leave here loving it a little bit more.

One cannot look too closely at and weigh in too golden scales the acts of men hot in their political excitement.

Henry Hawkins, 1st Baron Brampton

In a criminal proceeding the question is not alone whether substantial justice has been done, but whether justice has been done according to law. All proceedings in poenam are, it need scarcely be observed, strictissimi juris; nor should it be forgotten that the formalities of law, though here and there they may lead to the escape of an offender, are intended on the whole to insure the safe administration of justice and the protection of innocence, and must be observed. A party accused has the right to insist on them as matter of right, of which he cannot be deprived against his will; and the Judge must see that they are followed.

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

I am quite aware that owing to some of its scenes [James Joyce's] Ulysses is a rather strong draught to ask some sensitive, though normal, persons to take. But my considered opinion, after long reflection, is that whilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac. Ulysses may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.

John M. Woolsey

In questions of international law we should not depart from any settled decisions, nor lay down any doctrine inconsistent with them.

William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley

While unconstitutional exercise of power by the executive and legislative branches of the government is subject to judicial restraint, the only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint. For the removal of unwise laws from the statute books appeal lies not to the courts but to the ballot and to the processes of democratic government.

Harlan F. Stone

O Canada! Where pines and maples grow.
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western Sea,
Thou land of hope for all who toil!
Thou True North, strong and free!

Robert Stanley Weir

Resort to science has rendered modern war so destructive of life and property that it presents a new problem to mankind, such, that unless our civilization shall find some means of making an end to war, war will make an end to our civilization.

John Hessin Clarke

These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet;—

Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Under the laurel the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.

Francis Miles Finch

Convicted Criminal: As God is my judge—I am innocent.
Lord Birkett: He isn't; I am, and you're not!

Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett

The Constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime President.

There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.

Leon R. Yankwich

Fill every beaker up, my men, pour forth the cheering wine:
There's life and strength in every drop,—thanksgiving to the vine!

Albert Gorton Greene

Never walk when you can ride, never sit when you can lie down.

Samuel Freeman Miller

Vermont, O maiden of the hills,
My heart is there with thee!

Wendell Phillips Stafford

I could show how largely our laws and customs are based upon the laws of Moses and the teachings of Christ; how constantly the Bible is appealed to as the guide of life and the authority in questions of morals... Add a volume of unofficial declaration to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.

David Josiah Brewer

It is always probable that something improbable will happen.

Logan Edwin Bleckley

When we are reduced to observation Science crawls.

John Fletcher Moulton, Baron Moulton

Science cannot determine origin, and so cannot determine destiny. As it presents only a sectional view of creation, it gives only a sectional view of everything in creation.

Thomas Charles Munger

Man is more than merely an animal to exist and propagate his species. His mind gives him capacity to search out the great truths in God's arrangement and this lifts him far above the other animal creation.

Joseph Franklin Rutherford

Would we hold liberty, we must have charity- charity to others, charity to ourselves, crawling up from the moist ovens of a steaming world, still carrying the passional equipment of our ferocious ancestors, emerging from black superstition amid carnage and atrocity to our perilous present.

Future lawyers should be more aware that law is not a system of abstract logic, but the web of arrangements, rooted in history but also in hopes, for promoting to a maximum the full use of a nation's resources and talents.

Felix Frankfurter

When Shakespeare begins his exposition thus he generally at first makes people talk about the hero, but keeps the hero himself for some time out of sight, so that we await his entrance with curiosity, and sometimes with anxiety.

Andrew Coyle Bradley

Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses.

Charles Evans Hughes

The common right is nothing more or less than the protection of all, pouring its rays on each. This protection of each by all, is Fraternity.