John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

It is the duty of the Judge in criminal trials to take care that the verdict of the jury is not founded upon any evidence except that which the law allows.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
Fellows of colleges in the universities are in one sense the recipients of alms, because they receive funds which originally were of an eleemosynary character.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
Law grows, and though the principles of law remain unchanged, yet (and it is one of the advantages of the common law) their application is to be changed with the changing circumstances of the times. Some persons may call this retrogression, I call it progression of human opinion.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
We must not be guilty of taking the law into our own hands, and converting it from what it really is to what we think it ought to be.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty; but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
However much men may honestly endeavour to limit the exercise of their discretion by definite rule, there must always be room for idiosyncracy; and idiosyncracy, as the word expresses, varies with the man. But there is, besides this, that of which every student of legal history must be aware, the leaning of the Courts for a certain time in a particular direction, balanced at least, if not reversed, by the leaning of the Courts for a certain time in a direction opposite. The current of legal decision runs often to a point which is felt to be beyond the bounds of sound and sane control, and there is danger sometimes that the retrocession of the current should become itself extreme.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
I was brought up under a system in which discretion when given was practically absolute. It was the unbroken tradition of Westminster Hall. I believe that system worked justice and saved expense. I hope I may be forgiven if, with what energy remains to me, I strive after many years' experience and drawing near the close of my judicial career, to preserve this unfettered discretion which in my opinion, was given me by Parliament, and which I have never, at least intentionally abused.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
I must lay down the law as I understand it, and as I read it in books of authority.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
As a lawyer I am before and above all things for the supremacy of law.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
It is far more important the law should be administered with absolute integrity, than that in this case or in that the law should be a good law or a bad one.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
I am sure from my experience of juries that, in a criminal case especially, they will obey the law as declared by the Judge; they will take the law from the Judge, whether they like it or do not like it, and apply it honestly to the facts before them.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
As long as we have to administer the law we must do so according to the law as it is. We are not here to make the law.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
The moment juries or judges go beyond their functions, and take upon themselves to lay down the law or find the facts, not according to the law as it is, but according to the law as they think it ought to be, then the certainty of the law is at an end; there is nothing to rely upon; we are left to the infinite variety and uncertainty of human opinion; to caprice which may at any moment influence the best of us, to feelings and prejudices, perhaps excellent in themselves, but which may distort or disturb our judgment, and distract our minds from the single simple operation of ascertaining whether the facts proved bring the case within the law as we are bound to take it.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
We are now Courts of equity, and must decide the thing according to all the rights.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
I think there should be no occasion on which it is absolutely, as a point or rule of law, impossible for a man to redeem his character.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
We have to administer the law whether we like it or no.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
We must follow the old authorities and precedents in criminal matters.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge
I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge